UTH^S 
ENCOUNTER 


COMPTON 

MACKENZIE 


•  » 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

i 


YOUTH'S 
ENCOUNTER 


BY 

COMPTON  MACKENZIE 

author  of 

"the  passionate  elopement," 

"carnival,"  etc. 


NEW  YORK 
D.  APPLETON   AND    COMPANY 


Copyright,  19 13,  by 
D.  APPLETON  AND   COMPANY 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


To 

The    Reverend 

E.  D.  STONE 


LI3RAKf 


^^The  imagination  of  a  boy  is  healthy j 
and  the  mature  imagination  of  a  man 
is  healthy;  but  there  is  a  space  of  life 
between^  in  which  the  soul  is  in  fer- 
ment, the  character  undecided,  the  way 
of  life  uncertain,  the  ambition  thick- 
sighted.'' — John  Keats. 


CONTENTS 


Book  One 
THE   PRISON   HOUSE 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.     The  New  World       3 

n.     Bittersweet        22 

HI.     Fears  and  Fantasies 41 

IV.     Unending    Childhood 48 

V.     The  First  Fairy  Princess 72 

VI.     The  Enchanted  Palace 87 

Vn.     Youth's   Encounter 99 

Vni.     More  Encounters 115 

IX.     Holidays   in    France 131 


Book  Two 

CLASSIC  EDUCATION 

I.  The  Jacobean 145 

II.  The  Quadruple  Intrigue 163 

III.  Pastoral 181 

IV.  Boyhood's   Glory 193 

V.  Incense 214 

VI.     Pax        238 

VII.     Cloven   Hoofmarks 254 

VIII.     Mirrors 268 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

IX.     The  Yellow  Age 287 

X.     Stella 314 

XI.     Action  and  Reaction 327 

XII.     Alan 351 

XIII.  Sentiment 360 

XIV.  Arabesque 383 

XV.     Gray   Eyes 402 

XVI.     Blue  Eyes 421 

XVII.     Lily       432 

XVIII.     Eighteen  Years  Old 452 

XIX.     Parents 475 

XX.    Music 485 


BOOK   ONE 
THE  PRISON  HOUSE 


^^What  youth,  Goddess — what  guest 
Of  Gods  or  mortals  ?  '  * 


Matthew  Arnold. 


CHAPTER   I 
THE    NEW   WORLD 

FROM  a  world  of  daisies  as  big  as  moons  and  of 
mountainous  green  hillocks  Michael  Fane  came  by- 
some  unrealized  method  of  transport  to  the  thin 
red  house,  that  as  yet  for  his  mind  could  not  claim  an 
individual  existence  amid  the  uniformity  of  a  long  line  of 
fellows.  His  arrival  coincided  with  a  confusion  of  furni- 
ture, with  the  tramp  of  men  backwards  and  forwards  from 
a  cavernous  vehicle  very  dry  and  dusty.  He  found  himself 
continually  being  lifted  out  of  the  way  of  washstands  and 
skeleton  chests  of  drawers.  He  was  invited  to  sit  down  and 
keep  quiet,  and  almost  in  the  same  breath  to  walk  about  and 
avoid  hindrance.  Finally,  Nurse  led  him  up  many  resonant 
stairs  to  the  night-nursery,  which  at  present  consisted  of  two 
square  cots  that  with  japanned  iron  bars  stood  gauntly  in  a 
wilderness  of  oilcloth  surrounded  by  four  walls  patterned 
with  a  prolific  vegetation.  Michael  was  dumped  down 
upon  a  gray  pillow  and  invited  to  see  how  well  his  sister 
Stella  was  behaving.  Nurse's  observation  was  true 
enough:  Stella  was  rosily  asleep  in  an  undulation  of 
blankets,  and  Michael,  threatened  by  many  whispers  and 
bony  finger-shakes,  was  not  at  all  inclined  to  wake  her  up. 
Nurse  retired  in  an  aura  of  importance,  and  Michael  set 
out  to  establish  an  intimacy  with  the  various  iron  bars  of 
his  cage.     For   a  grown-up  person   these  would   certainly 

3 


YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 


have  seemed  much  more  alike  than  even  the  houses  of 
Carlington  Road,  West  Kensington;  for  Michael  each  bar 
possessed  a  personality.  Minute  scratches  unnoticed  by  the 
heedless  adult  world  lent  variety  of  expression ;  slight  irreg- 
ularities infused  certain  groups  with  an  air  of  deliberate 
consultation.  From  the  four  corners  royal  bars,  crowned 
with  brass,  dominated  their  subjects.  Passions,  intrigues, 
rumors,  ambitions,  revenges  were  perceived  by  Michael 
to  be  seething  below  the  rigid  exterior  of  these  iron  bars; 
even  military  operations  were  sometimes  discernible.  This 
cot  was  guarded  by  a  romantic  population,  with  one  or 
two  of  whose  units  Michael  could  willingly  have  dispensed; 
one  bar  in  particular,  set  very  much  askew,  seemed  sly  and 
malignant.  Michael  disliked  being  looked  at  by  anybody  or 
anything,  and  this  bar  had  a  persistent  inquisitiveness  which 
already  worried  him.  "Why  does  he  look  at  me?"  Michael 
would  presently  ask,  and  "Nobody  wants  to  look  at  such  an 
ugly  little  boy,"  Nurse  would  presently  reply.  So  one  more 
intolerable  question  would  overshadow  his  peace  of  mind. 

Meanwhile,  far  below  the  tramp  of  men  continued, 
until  suddenly  an  immense  roar  filled  the  room.  Some  of 
the  bars  shivered  and  clinked,  and  Michael's  heart  nearly 
stopped.  The  roar  died  away  only  to  be  succeeded  by 
another  roar  from  the  opposite  direction.  Stella  woke  up 
crying.  Michael  w^as  too  deeply  frightened  so  to  soothe 
himself,  as  he  sat  clutching  the  pointed  ears  of  the  gray 
pillow.  Stella,  feeling  that  the  fretful  tears  of  a  sudden 
awakening  were  insufficient,  set  up  a  bellow  of  dismay. 
Michael  was  motionless,  only  aware  of  a  gigantic  heart 
that  shook  him  horribly.  At  last  the  footsteps  of  Nurse 
could  be  heard,  and  over  them  the  quick  "tut-tut-tuts" 
that  voiced  her  irritation. 

"You  naughty  boy,  to  wake  up  your  little  sister." 

"What  was  that  noise?"  asked   Michael. 

"Your  own  noise,"  said  Nurse  sharply. 


THE    NEW   WORLD 


"It  wasn't.     It  was  lions." 

"And  if  it  was  lions,  what  next?"  said  Nurse.  "Lions 
will  always  come,  when  little  boys  are  naughty.  Lions 
don't  like  naughty  boys." 

"Michael  doesn't  like  lions." 

He  took  refuge  in  the  impersonal  speech  of  earlier  days, 
and  with  a  grave  obstinacy  of  demeanor  resisted  the  unrea- 
sonableness of  his  nurse. 

"What  was  that  noise,  Nanny?     Do  tell  me." 

"Why  a  train,  of  course.  There's  a  mollycoddle.  Tut- 
tut!" 

"A  train  like  we  rode  in  from  down  in  the  country?" 

"Yes,  a  train  like  we  rode  in  from  down  in  the  country!" 
Nurse  mimicked  him  in  an  outrageous  falsetto. 

"Not  lions  at  all?" 

"Not  if  you're  a  good  boy." 

"Nor  bears — nor  tigers — nor  wolverines?" 

The  last  was  a  dreadful  importation  of  fancy  from  some 
zoological  gift-book. 

"Now  that's  enough,"  Nurse  decided. 

"Nor  laughing  hyenas?" 

"Am  I  to  speak  to  you  again?  As  if  there  wasn't 
enough  to  do  without  children  why-why-whying  morning, 
noon  and  night." 

Michael  recognized  finality  of  argument.  The  mention 
of  morning,  noon  and  night  with  their  dreary  suggestion  of 
the  infinite  and  unattainable  plunged  him  into  silence. 
Nurse,  gratified  by  her  victory  and  relieved  to  find  that 
Stella  was  crooning  happy  mysteries  to  a  rag  doll,  announced 
that  she  was  prepared  in  return  for  the  very  best  behavior 
to  push  the  two  cots  against  the  window.  This  done,  she 
left  the  children  to  their  first  survey  of  London  airs,  to 
silent  wonder  amid  the  cheeping  of  countless  sparrows. 

Stella  sat  blinking  at  the  light  and  the  sailing  clouds. 
She  soon  began  to  chant  her  saga.     Primitive  and  imme- 


YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 


morial  sounds  flowed  from  that  dewy  mouth;  melodies  and 
harmonies,  akin  to  the  day  itself,  voiced  the  progress  of  the 
clouds;  and  while  she  told  her  incommunicable  delight 
there  was  actually  no  one  to  say,  "Stella,  will  you  stop  that 
'umming!"  Michael  could  not  compete  with  his  sister  in 
her  interpretation  of  the  clouds'  courses.  He  had,  indeed, 
tried  once  or  twice;  but  Stella  either  stopped  abruptly, 
leaving  him  to  lag  for  a  while  with  a  lame  tune  of  his  own, 
or  else  she  would  burst  into  tears.  Michael  preferred  an 
inspiration  more  immediately  visual  to  Stella's  incompre- 
hensibly boundless  observations.  Michael  would  enjoy 
holding  in  his  hand  a  bunch  of  blue  cornflowers;  Stella 
would  tear  them  to  pieces,  not  irritably,  but  absently  in 
a  seclusion  of  spacious  visions.  On  this  occasion  Michael 
paid  no  attention  to  Stella's  salutation  of  light;  he  was 
merely  thankful  she  showed  no  sign  of  wishing  to  be  amused 
by  "peep-bo,"  or  by  the  pulling  of  curious  faces.  Both 
these  diversions  were  dangerous  to  Michael's  peace  of  mind, 
because  at  some  period  of  the  entertainment  he  was  bound, 
with  disastrous  results,  to  cross  the  line  between  Stella's 
joy  and  Stella's  fear.  Michael  turned  to  look  out  of  the 
window,  finding  the  details  of  the  view  enthralling.  He 
marked  first  of  all  the  long  row  of  poplar  trees  already  fresh 
and  vivid  with  young  May's  golden  green.  Those  trees, 
waving  with  their  youthfulness  in  the  wind,  extended  as  far 
as  could  be  observed  on  either  side.  Three  in  every  garden 
were  planted  close  to  the  farthest  wall.  How  beautiful 
they  looked,  and  how  the  sparrows  hopped  from  branch 
to  branch.  Michael  let  his  eyes  rove  along  the  pleasant 
green  line  whose  slightness  and  evenness  caressed  the  vision, 
as  velvet  might  have  caressed  a  hand  running  lightly  over 
the  surface.  Suddenly,  with  a  sharp  emotion  of  shame, 
Michael  perceived  that  the  middle  tree  opposite  his  own 
window  was  different  from  the  rest.  It  was  not  the  same 
shape;  it  carried  little  blobs  such  as  hang  from  tablecloths 


THE    NEW   WORLD 


and  curtains ;  it  scarcely  showed  a  complete  leaf.  Here  was 
a  subject  for  speculation  indeed;  and  the  more  Michael 
looked  at  the  other  trees,  the  more  he  grew  ashamed  for  the 
loiterer.  This  problem  would  worry  him  interminably;  he 
would  return  to  it  often  and  often.  But  the  exquisite 
pleasure  he  had  taken  in  the  trim  and  equable  row  was 
gone;  for  as  soon  as  the  eye  caressed  it,  there  was  this 
intolerably  naked  tree  to  affront  all  regularity. 

After  the  trees,  Michael  examined  the  trellis  that 
extended  along  the  top  of  a  stuccoed  wall  without  inter- 
ruption on  either  side.  This  trellis  was  a  curiosity,  for  if 
he  looked  at  it  very  hard,  the  lozenges  of  space  came  out 
from  their  frame  and  moved  about  in  a  blur — an  odd 
business  presumably  inexplicable  forevermore  like  every- 
thing else.  Beyond  the  trellis  was  the  railway;  and  while 
Michael  was  looking  a  signal  shot  down,  a  distant  roar 
drew  near,  and  a  real  train  rumbled  past  which,  beheld 
from  Michael's  window,  looked  like  a  toy  train  loaded  with 
dolls,  one  of  whom  wore  a  red  Tam-o'-shanter.  Michael 
longed  to  be  sitting  once  again  in  that  moving  wonderland 
and  to  be  looking  out  of  the  window,  himself  wearing  just 
such  another  red  Tam-o'-shanter.  Beyond  the  railway  was 
surely  a  very  extraordinary  place  indeed,  with  mountains 
of  coal  everywhere  and  black  figures  roaming  about;  and 
beyond  this,  far  far  away,  was  a  very  low  line  of  houses 
with  a  church  steeple  against  an  enormous  sky. 

"Dinner-time!  Tut-tut,"  said  Nurse,  suddenly  bustling 
into  the  room  to  interrupt  Stella's  saga  and  Michael's 
growing  dread  of  being  left  alone  in  that  wilderness  beyond 
the  railway  lines. 

"Could  I  be  left  there?"  he  asked. 

"Left  where?" 

"There."     He  pointed  to  the  coal-yard. 

"Don't  point!"  said  Nurse. 

"What  is  that  place?" 


8  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

"The  place  where  coal  comes  from." 

"Could  I  be  left  there?"  he  persisted. 

"Not  unless  one  of  the  coalmen  came  over  the  wall  and 
carried  you  off  and  left  you  there,  which  he  will  do  unless 
you're  a  good  boy." 

Michael  caught  his  breath. 

"Can  coalmen  climb?"  he  asked,  choking  at  the  thought. 

"Climb  like  kittens,"  said  Nurse. 

A  new  bogey  had  been  created,  black  and  hairy  with 
yellow  cats'  eyes  and  horrid  prehensile  arms. 

Michael  and  Stella  were  now  lifted  out  of  the  cots  and 
dumped  on  to  the  cold  oilcloth  and  marched  into  the  adja- 
cent bathroom,  where  their  faces  and  hands  were  sponged 
with  a  new  sponge  that  was  not  only  rough  in  itself,  but 
also  had  something  that  scratched  buried  in  one  of  the 
pores.  During  this  operation,  Nurse  blew  violent  breaths 
through  her  tightly  closed  lips.  When  it  was  over,  Stella 
was  lifted  up  into  Nurse's  arms;  Michael  was  commanded 
to  walk  downstairs  in  front  and  not  to  let  go  of  the  ban- 
isters; then  down  they  went,  down  and  down  and  down — 
past  three  doors  opening  into  furniture-heaped  rooms,  past 
a  door  with  upper  panels  of  colored  glass  in  a  design  of  red 
and  amber  sparrows  upon  a  crude  blue  vegetation — a  beau- 
tiful door,  Michael  thought,  as  he  went  by.  Down  and 
down  and  down  into  the  hall  which  was  strewn  with  bits 
of  straw  and  shavings  and  had  another  glass-panelled  door 
very  gaudy.  Here  the  floor  was  patterned  with  terra-cotta, 
yellow,  black  and  slate-blue  tiles.  Two  more  doors  were 
passed,  and  a  third  door  was  reached,  opening  apparently 
on  a  box  into  which  light  was  let  through  windows  of  such 
glass  as  is  seen  round  the  bottom  of  bird-cages.  This  final 
staircase  v/as  even  in  the  fullest  daylight  very  dim  and 
eerie,  and  was  permeated  always  with  a  smell  of  burnt 
grease  and  damp  cloths.     Half-way  down  Michael  shrunk 


THE    NEW   WORLD 


back  against  Nurse's  petticoats,  for  in  front  of  him  yawned 
a  terrible  cavern  exuding  chill. 

"What's  that?"  he  gasped. 

"Bless  the  boy,   he'll  have  me  over!"   cried   Nurse. 

"Oh,  Nanny,  w^hat  is  it — that  hole?  Michael  doesn't 
like  that   hole." 

"There's  a  milksop.  Tut-tut!  Frightened  by  a  coal- 
cellar!     Get  on  with  you,  do." 

Michael,  holding  tightly  to  the  banisters,  achieved  the 
ground  and  was  hustled  into  the  twilight  of  the  morning- 
room.  Stella  was  fitted  into  her  high  chair;  the  circular 
tray  was  brought  over  from  behind  and  thumped  into  its 
place  with  a  click;  Michael  was  lifted  up  and  thumped 
down  into  another  high  chair  and  pushed  close  up  to  the 
table  so  that  his  knees  were  chafed  by  the  sharp  edge  and 
his  thighs  pinched  by  a  loose  strand  of  cane.  Nurse,  blow- 
ing as  usual  through  closed  lips,  cut  up  his  meat,  and 
dinner  was  carried  through  in  an  atmosphere  of  greens  and 
fat  and  warm  milk-and-water  and  threats  of  Gregory- 
powder,  if  every  bit  were  not  eaten. 

Presently  the  tramping  of  furniture-men  was  renewed 
and  the  morning-room  was  made  darker  still  by  the  arrival 
of  a  second  van  which  pulled  up  at  right  angles  to  the  first. 
In  the  course  of  dinner,  Cook  entered.  She  was  a  fat 
masculine  creature  who  always  kept  her  arms  folded  beneath 
a  coarse  and  spotted  apron;  and  after  Cook  came  Annie 
the  housemaid,  tall  and  thin  and  anaemic.  These  two 
watched  the  children  eating,  while  they  gossiped  with 
Nurse. 

"Isn't  Mrs.  Fane  coming  at  all,  then?"  inquired  Cook. 

"For  a  few  minutes — for  a  few  minutes,"  said  Nurse 
quickly,  and  Michael  would  not  have  been  so  very  sus- 
picious had  he  not  observed  the  nodding  of  her  head  long 
after  there  was  any  need  to  nod  it. 

"Is  mother  going  to  stay  with  us?"  he  asked. 
2 


10 YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

"Stay?  Stay?  Of  course  she'll  stay.  Stay  forever," 
asserted  Nurse  in  her  bustling  voice. 

"Funny  not  to  be  here  when  the  furniture  came,"  said 
Cook. 

"Yes,  wasn't  it?"  echoed  Annie.  "It  was  funny.  That's 
what  I  thought.     How  funny,  I  thought." 

"Not  that  I  suppose  things  will  be  what  you  might  call 
properly  arranged  just  yet?"  Cook  speculated. 

"Everything  arranged.  Everything  arranged,"  Nurse 
snapped.    "Nothing  to  arrange.     Nothing  to  arrange." 

And  as  if  to  stifle  forever  any  ability  in  Michael  to  ask 
questions,  she  proceeded  to  cram  his  mouth  with  a  dessert- 
spoonful of  rice  pudding  from  her  own  plate,  jarring  his 
teeth  with  the  spoon  when  she  withdrew  it. 

Then  Michael's  lovely  mother  in  vivid  rose  silk  came 
into  the  room,  and  Cook  squeezed  herself  backwards  through 
the  door  very  humbly  and  so  quietly  that  Annie  found 
herself  alone  before  she  realized  the  fact;  so  that  in  order 
to  cover  her  confusion  and  assist  her  retreat  she  w^as  com- 
pelled to  snatch  away  Michael's  plate  of  rice  pudding 
before  he  had  finished  the  last  few  clotted  grains.  Michael 
was  grateful  to  Annie  for  this,  and  he  regarded  her  from 
that  moment  as  an  ally.  Thenceforth  he  would  often  seek 
her  out  in  what  she  called  "her"  pantry,  there  to  nibble 
biscuits,  while  Annie  dried  cups  and  sw^ung  them  from 
brass  hooks. 

"How  cozy  you  all  look,"  said  mother.  "Darling  Stella, 
are  you  enjoying  your  rice  pudding?  And,  darling 
Michael,"  she  added,  "I  hope  you're  being  very  good." 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Nurse.  "Good!  Yes.  He's  very  good. 
Oh,  yes.     Tut-tut!     Tut-tut!" 

After  this  exhalation  of  approval  Nurse  blew  several 
breaths,  leaned  over  him,  pulled  down  his  blue  and  white 
sailor  top,  and  elevated  his  chin  with  the  back  of  her  hand. 

"There's  no  need  to  bother  about  the  drawing-room  or 


THE    NEW   WORLD ii 

the  dining-room  or  my  bedroom  or,  in  fact,  any  of  the 
rooms  except  the  night-nursery  and  the  day-nursery. 
You're  quite  straight  in  here.  I  shall  be  back  by  the  end 
of  June." 

Nurse  shook  her  head  very  violently  at  this,  and  Michael 
felt  tears  of  apprehension  welling  up  into  his  eyes.  Mrs. 
Fane  paused  a  moment  doubtfully;  then  she  waved  beauti- 
ful slim  gloves  and  glided  from  the  room.  Michael 
listened  to  delicate  footsteps  on  the  stairs,  and  the  tinkle  of 
small  ornaments.  A  bleak  silence  followed  the  banging 
of  the  front  door. 

"She's  gone  away.     I  know  she's  gone  away,"  he  moaned. 

"Who's  She?"  demanded  Nurse.  "She's  the  cat's 
mother." 

"Mother!  Mother!"  he  wailed.  "She  always  goes 
away  from  Michael." 

"And  no  wonder,"  said  Nurse.  "Dear,  dear!  Yes — 
tut-tut! — but  goodness  gracious,  she  won't  be  gone  long. 
She'll  be  back  in  June." 

"What's  June?"  Michael  asked. 

"If  you  ask  any  more  silly  questions,  you'll  go  to  bed, 
young  man;  but  if  you're  a  good  boy,  I'll  tell  you  a  story.'* 

"A  real  story?     A  nice  long  story?"  asked  Michael. 

"I'll  tell  you  a  story  about  Jack  o'  my  Nory 

And  now  my  story's  begun. 
I'll  tell  you  another  about  Jack  and  his  brother 

And  now  my  story's  done." 

Nurse  twiddled  her  thumbs  with  a  complacent  look,  as 
she  smacked  her  palate  upon  the  final  line. 

"That  isn't  a  story,"  said  Michael  sullenly.  "When 
will  mother  be  back?" 

"In  June.     That's  enough,"  said  Nurse. 

Michael  went  to  sleep  that  night,  trying  to  materialize 


12  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

this  mysterious  June.  It  came  to  mean  a  distant  warmth 
of  orange  light  towards  which  he  walked  very  slowly.  He 
lay  awake  thinking  of  June  in  the  luminousness  of  a  night 
light  shielded  from  his  direct  vision  by  a  basin.  His  hands 
were  muffled  in  fingerless  gloves  to  prevent  thumb-sucking. 
Suddenly  upon  the  quiet  came  a  blaze  of  light.  Had  he 
reached  June?  His  sleepy  eyelids  uncurled  to  the  scented 
vision  of  his  beautiful  mother.  But  it  was  only  gaslight 
playing  and  fluttering  over  the  figure  of  anaemic  Annie  tak- 
ing hairpin  after  hairpin  from  her  hair.  Yet  there  was  a 
certain  interest  in  watching  Annie  undress.  Her  actions 
were  less  familiar  than  those  of  Nurse.  Her  lips  were 
softer  to  kiss.  Then  the  vision  of  June,  rising  and  falling 
with  Annie's  breath,  recurred  from  distances  unattainable, 
'faded  again  into  the  blackness  of  the  night,  and  after  a 
while  came  back  dazzling  and  golden.  It  was  morning, 
and  in  a  chirping  of  sparrows  and  depth  of  quiet  sunlight 
Michael  began  to  wonder  why  he  was  sleeping  beside 
Annie  in  a  big  bed.  It  w^as  an  experience  that  stood  for 
a  long  time  in  his  memory  as  the  first  adventure  of  his  life. 
The  adventure  of  Annie  was  a  solitary  occasion.  By  the 
following  night  the  regular  night-nursery  w^as  ready  for 
occupation,  and  the  pea-green  vegetation  of  the  walls  was 
hidden  by  various  furniture.  Nurse's  bed  flanked  by  the 
tw^o  cots  occupied  much  of  its  space.  Round  the  fire  was  a 
nursery  fender  on  which  hung  perpetually  various  cloths 
and  clothes  and  blankets  and  sheets  which,  as  it  w^as  sum- 
mer at  the  time,  might  all  have  been  dried  much  more 
easily  out  of  doors.  Pictures  were  hung  upon  the  wall 
— pictures  that  with  the  progress  of  time  became  delight- 
fully intimate  experiences.  They  w^ere  mostly  framed 
chromolithographs  saved  from  the  Christmas  numbers  of 
illustrated  papers.  There  was  Cherry  Ripe — a  delicious 
and  demure  girl  in  a  white  dress  with  a  pink  sash,  for  whom 
Michael  began  to  feel  a  romantic  affection.    There  was  the 


THE   NEW   WORLD 13 

picture  of  a  little  girl  eating  a  slice  of  bread-and-butter 
on  a  doorstep,  watched  by  a  fox  terrier  and  underneath 
inscribed  "Give  me  a  piece,  please."  Michael  did  not  know 
whether  to  feel  more  sorry  for  the  little  girl  or  the  dog; 
some  sort  of  compassion,  he  thought,  was  demanded.  It 
was  a  problem  picture  insoluble  over  many  years  of  specula- 
tion. The  night-nursery  seemed  always  full  of  Nurse's 
clothes.  Her  petticoats  were  usually  checkered  or  uniform 
red,  preternaturally  bright  in  contrast  with  the  blackness 
of  the  exterior  apparel.  The  latter  of  heavy  serge  or  similar 
material  was  often  sown  with  jet  bugles  which  scratched 
Michael's  face  when  he  played  "Hide-Oh"  among  the  folds 
of  such  obvious  concealment.  Apart  from  these  petticoats 
and  skirts,  the  most  individual  possession  of  Nurse's  ward- 
robe was  a  moon-shaped  bustle  of  faded  crimson  which 
Michael  loved  to  swing  from  the  bedpost  whence  out 
of  use  it  was  suspended.  There  was  also  in  a  top  drawer, 
generally  unattainable,  a  collection  of  caps  threaded  with 
many  different  velvet  ribbons  and  often  coquettish  with 
lace  flowers.  Michael  was  glad  when  Nurse  put  on  her 
best  cap,  a  proceeding  which  took  place  just  before  tea. 
Her  morning  cap  was  so  skimpy  as  scarcely  to  hide  the 
unpleasant  smoothness  of  her  thin  hair.  In  the  amber 
summer  afternoons  or  blue  spring  twilights.  Nurse 
looked  comparatively  beautiful  under  the  ample  lace,  with 
a  softer  apron  and  a  face  whose  wrinkles  were  smoothed 
out  by  the  consciousness  of  leisure  and  the  pleasant  brown 
teapot.  Mostly,  Michael  was  inclined  to  compare  her  with 
a  monkey,  so  squab  was  her  nose,  so  long  her  upper  lip, 
and  such  a  multitude  of  deep  furrows  twisted  up  her  coun- 
tenance. That  Nurse  was  ever  young,  Michael  could  not 
bring  himself  to  believe,  and  daguerreotypes  framed  in  tin- 
foil which  she  produced  as  evidence  of  youth  from  a  square 
box  inlaid  w^ith  mother-o'-pearl,  never  convinced  him  as  a 
chromolithograph  might  have  convinced  him.    At  the  same 


14  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

time  the  stories  of  her  childhood,  which  Nurse  was  some- 
times persuaded  to  tell,  were  very  enthralling;  moreover, 
by  the  fact  of  her  obvious  antiquity,  they  had  the  dimness 
and  mystery  of  old  fairy-tales. 

On  the  whole  Michael  w^as  happy  in  his  pea-green 
nursery.  He  was  well  guarded  by  the  iron  soldiers  of  his 
cot.  He  liked  the  warmth  and  the  smallness  of  the 
room;  he  liked  to  be  able  to  climb  from  his  cot  on  to 
Nurse's  bed,  from  Nurse's  bed  into  Stella's  cot  and  with 
this  expanse  of  safe  territory  he  felt  sorry  for  the  chilly 
and  desolate  and  dangerous  floor.  Michael  also  liked  the 
day-nursery.  To  begin  with,  it  possessed  a  curious  and 
romantic  shape  due  to  its  nearness  to  the  roof.  The  ceil- 
ing sloped  on  either  side  of  the  window  almost  to  the 
floor.  It  was  not  a  room  that  was  square  and  obvious,  for 
round  the  corner  from  the  door  was  a  fairly  large  alcove 
which  was  not  destined  to  lose  its  romance  for  many  years. 
The  staircase  that  led  up  to  the  day-nursery  was  light  and 
cheerful  owing  to  the  skylight  in  the  roof.  Yet  this  skylight 
Michael  could  have  wished  away.  It  w^as  a  vulnerable 
spot  which  made  the  day-nursery  just  a  little  uneasy  at 
dusk — this  and  the  cistern  cupboard  with  its  dark  boomings 
and  hammerings  and  clankings  and  utter  inexplicableness. 
However,  the  day-nursery  was  a  bright  room  with  a  cozy 
atmosphere  of  its  own.  The  pleasantest  meal  of  the  day 
was  taken  there,  and  in  a  black  cupboard  lived  the  golden 
syrup  and  the  heraldic  mugs  and  the  dumpy  teapot  and  the 
accessories  of  tea.  What  a  much  pleasanter  cupboard 
this  was  than  the  smaller  one  in  the  night-nursery  which 
revealed,  when  opened,  slim  and  ugly  ipecacuanha,  loath- 
some Gregory-powder  with  wooden  cap  and  squat  cork, 
wicked  envelopes  of  gray  powders  and  slippery  bottles  of 
castor-oil.  There,  too,  was  the  liver-colored  liquorice- 
powder,  the  vile  rhubarb  and  the  deceitful  senna.  In  fact, 
apart  from  a  bag  of  jaded  acid-drops,  there  were  only  two 


THE    NEW   WORLD  15 

pleasant  inmates  of  this  cupboard — the  silvery  and  lucent 
syrup  of  squills  and  a  round  box  of  honey  and  borax. 
There  were  no  pills  because  Nurse  objected  to  pills.  She 
was  always  telling  Michael  as  he  listened,  sick  at  heart,  to 
the  stirring-up  of  the  Gregory-powder  with  a  muffled  spoon, 
so  different  from  the  light-hearted  tinkle  and  quick  fizz  of 
magnesia,  to  be  thankful  he  was  not  on  the  verge  of  taking 
a  pill.  That  she  represented  as  something  worthy  of  a 
struggle.  Michael  imagined  the  taking  of  a  pill  to  be  equiv- 
alent to  swallow^ing  a  large  painted  ball  full  of  a  combina- 
tion of  all  the  nastiest  medicines  in  the  w^orld.  Even  the 
omnipotent,  omniscient  Nanny  could  not  take  a  pill. 

There  were  other  jolly  cupboards  in  the  day-nursery — 
one  in  particular  pasted  over  with  "scraps"  and  varnished 
— a  work  of  art  that  was  always  being  added  to  for  a 
treat.  There  was  a  patchwork  hearthrug  very  comfortable 
to  lie  upon  beside  the  cat  and  her  two  black  kittens.  There 
was  Nanny's  work-table  in  the  window,  gay  with  colored 
silks  and  wools.  There  was  a  piano  locked  up  until 
Michael's  first  lesson,  but  nevertheless  wonderful  on  ac- 
count of  the  smooth  curve  of  the  lid  that  allowed  one 
moment's  delicious  balance  and  then  an  equally  delicious 
slide  on  to  the  floor. 

Certainly  the  day-nursery  was  the  best  room  in  the  tall 
thin  house,  just  as  the  morning-room  was  the  worst.  The 
morning-room  was  odious.  In  it  were  eaten  breakfast  and 
dinner,  both  nasty  meals.  Near  it  was  the  coal-cellar  and 
the  area-door  with  its  grinning  errand  boys.  The  windows 
afforded  foothold  to  strange  cats  that  stared  abominably 
with  yellow  eyes.  Tramps  and  sweeps  walked  past  the 
area-railings  or  looked  in  evilly.  Horrid  gypsies  smirked 
through  the  window,  and  pedlars  often  tapped.  The 
morning-room  was  utterly  abominable,  fit  only  for  the 
boiled  mutton  and  caper  sauce  and  suet  puddings  that 
loaded  its  table. 


1 6  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

The  kitchen,  although  it  was  next  to  the  morning-room, 
was  a  far  pleasanter  resort.  So  far  as  any  ground-floor  now 
could  be  considered  safe,  the  kitchen  was  safe.  It  looked 
out  upon  its  own  fortified  basement  whose  perforated  iron 
staircase  had  a  spiked  door  at  the  top,  which  could  be 
securely  shut.  The  kitchen  contained  a  large  number  of 
objects  of  natural  interest,  among  which  was  a  shallow 
cupboard  that  included  upon  an  attainable  shelf  jars  of 
currants,  sultanas,  and  rice  much  more  edible  in  the  raw 
state  than  cooked.  There  was  the  electric-bell  case,  re- 
cording with  mysterious  discs  a  far-off  summons.  There 
was  the  drawer  in  the  kitchen  table  that  contained  besides 
knives  and  forks,  a  rolling-pin,  a  tin-opener,  a  corkscrew, 
skewers  and,  most  exciting  of  all,  a  club-shaped  cage  for 
whipping  eggs.  There  was  also  a  deep  drawer  in  the  dresser 
which  held  many  revelations  of  the  private  history  of  Annie 
and  Cook.  Michael  could  easily  have  spent  days  in  the 
kitchen  without  exhausting  its  treasures,  and  as  for  Cook, 
gross  though  she  was  and  heavily  though  she  smelt  of  on- 
ions and  beer,  her  tales  were  infinitely  superior  to  anything 
ever  known  in  the  way  of  narration. 

Towards  the  end  of  June,  Mrs.  Fane  came  back.  Her 
arrival  was  heralded  by  the  purchase  of  several  pots  of  mar- 
guerites and  calceolarias — the  latter  to  Michael  a  very 
objectionable  flower  because,  detecting  in  it  some  resem- 
blance to  his  dearly  loved  snapdragons,  he  pressed  open  the 
mouth  of  a  flower  and,  finding  inside  a  small  insect,  had  to 
drop  the  whole  pot  in  a  shudder.  This  brought  the  punish- 
ment of  not  being  allowed  to  watch  from  the  steps  for  his 
mother's  cab  rounding  the  corner  into  Carlington  Road, 
and  made  calceolarias  forever  hateful.  However,  Mrs. 
Fane  arrived  in  the  richness  of  a  midsummer  twilight,  and 
Michael  forgot  all  about  calceolarias  in  his  happiness.  All 
day  long  for  many  golden  days  he  pattered  up  and  down 
the  house  and  in  and  out  of  all  the  rooms  at  his  mother's 


THE    NEW   WORLD  17 


heels.  He  held  coils  of  picture-wire  and  hooks  and  ham- 
mers and  nails  and  balls  of  wool  and  reels  of  silk  and 
strands  of  art-muslin  and  spiders  of  cotton-wool  and  Jap- 
anese fans  and  plumes  of  pampas  grass  and  all  the  petty 
utilities  and  beauties  of  house  arrangement.  By  the  end 
of  July  every  room  was  finally  arranged,  and  Michael  and 
Stella  with  their  mother,  accompanied  by  Nurse  and  Annie, 
went  down  to  the  seaside  to  spend  two  wonderful  months. 
Michael  was  often  allowed  to  sit  up  an  extra  half-hour  and 
even  when  he  went  to  bed  his  mother  would  come  to  hear 
him  say  his  prayers.  She  would  sit  by  him,  her  lovely  face 
flushed  by  the  rose-red  August  sunsets  that  floated  in 
through  the  open  window  on  a  sound  of  sea-waves.  As 
it  grew  darker  and,  over  the  noise  of  happy  people  walk- 
ing about  in  the  cool  evening,  a  distant  band  played  music, 
his  mother  w^ould  lean  over  and  kiss  him  good  night.  He 
would  be  loath  to  let  her  go,  and  just  as  she  was  closing 
the  door  quietly,  he  would  call  her  back  and  whisper,  "One 
more  kiss,"  and  because  that  good-night  kiss  was  the  most 
enchanting  moment  in  his  day,  he  would  whisper  as  he 
held  her  to  him  very  close,  "Only  one  more,  but  much, 
much,  much  the  longest  kiss  in  all  the  world." 

They  were  indeed  two  very  wonderful  months.  In  the 
morning  Michael  would  sit  beside  his  mother  at  breakfast, 
and  for  a  great  treat  he  would  be  given  the  segment  she 
so  cleverly  cut  off  from  the  tip  of  her  egg.  And  for  another 
treat,  he  would  be  allowed  to  turn  the  finished  egg  upside 
down  and  present  it  to  her  as  a  second  untouched,  for  which 
she  would  be  very  grateful  and  by  whose  sudden  collapse 
before  the  tapping  of  the  spoon,  she  would  be  just  as  tre- 
mendously surprised.  After  the  egg  would  always  come 
two  delicious  triangles  of  toast,  each  balancing  a  single 
strawberry  from  the  pot  of  strawberry  jam.  After  break- 
fast, Michael  would  walk  round  the  heap  of  clinkers  in 
the  middle  of  the  parched  seaside  garden  while  his  mother 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 


read  her  letters,  and  very  soon  they  would  set  out  together 
to  the  beach,  where  in  time  they  would  meet  Nurse  and 
Stella  with  the  perambulator  and  the  camp-stools  and  the 
bag  of  greengages  or  William-pears.  Sand  castles  were 
made  and  boats  were  sailed  or  rather  were  floated  upside 
down  in  pools,  and  just  as  the  morning  was  getting  too 
good  to  last,  they  would  have  to  go  home  to  dinner,  join- 
ing on  to  the  procession  of  people  returning  up  the  cliffs. 
Michael  would  be  armed  with  a  spade,  a  boat  with  very 
wet  sails  and  sometimes  with  a  pail  full  of  sea-water  and 
diminutive  fish  that  died  one  by  one  in  the  course  of  the 
afternoon  heat.  After  dinner  Mrs.  Fane  would  lie  down 
for  a  while,  and  Michael  would  lie  down  for  a  great  treat 
beside  her  and  keep  breathless  and  still,  watching  the  shad- 
ows of  light  made  by  the  bellying  of  the  blind  in  the 
breeze.  Bluebottles  would  drone,  and  once  to  his  bodeful 
apprehension  a  large  spider  migrated  to  another  corner  of 
the  ceiling.  But  he  managed  to  restrain  himself  from 
waking  his  mother. 

One  afternoon  Michael  was  astonished  to  see  on  the 
round  table  by  the  bed  the  large  photograph  in  a  silver 
frame  of  a  man  in  knee-breeches  with  a  sword — a  prince 
evidently  by  his  splendid  dress  and  handsome  face.  He 
speculated  during  his  mother's  sleep  upon  this  portrait,  and 
the  moment  Annie  had  left  the  cup  of  tea  which  she 
brought  in  to  wake  his  mother  Michael  asked  w^ho  the 
man  was. 

"A  friend  of  mine,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"A  prince?" 

"No,  not  a  prince." 

"He  looks  like  a  prince,"  said  Michael  sceptically. 

"Does   he,    darling?" 

"I  think  he  does  look  like  a  prince.     Is  he  good?" 

"Very  good." 


THE    NEW   WORLD 19 

''What's  wrote  on  it?"  Michael  asked.  "Oh,  mother, 
when  will  I  read  writing?" 

"When  you're  older." 

"I  wish  I  was  older  now.  I  want  to  read  writing. 
What's  wrote  on  it?" 

"Always,"  his  mother  tcld  him. 

"Always?" 

"Yes." 

"Always  what?     Always  good?" 

"No,  just  plain  'always,'  "  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"What  a  funny  writing.     Who  wrote  it?" 

"The  man  in  the  picture." 

"Why?" 

"To  please  mother." 

"Shall  I  write  'always'  when  I  can  write?"   he  asked. 

"Of  course,  darling." 

"But  what  is  that  man  for?" 

"He's  an  old  friend  of  mother's." 

"I  like  him,"  said  Michael  confidently. 

"Do  you,  darling?"  said  his  mother,  and  then  suddenly 
she  kissed  him. 

That  evening  when  Michael's  prayers  were  concluded 
and  he  was  lying  very  still  in  his  bed,  he  waited  for  his 
mother's  tale. 

"Once  upon  a  time,"  she  began,  "there  was  a  very  large 
and  enormous  forest " 

"No,  don't  tell  about  a  forest,"  Michael  interrupted. 
"Tell  about  that  man  in  the  picture." 

Mrs.  Fane  was  staring  out  of  the  window,  and  after  a 
moment's  hesitation  she  turned  round. 

"Because  there  are  fairy-tales  without  a  prince,"  said 
Michael  apologetically. 

"Well,  once  upon  a  time,"  said  his  mother,  "there  lived 
in  an  old  old  country  house  three  sisters  whose  mother  had 
died  when  they  were  quite  small." 


20  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"Why  did  she  die?" 

"She  was  ill." 

Michael  sighed  sympathetically. 

"These  three  sisters,"  his  mother  went  on,  "lived  with 
their  father,  an  old  clergyman." 

"Was  he  kind  to  them?" 

"According  to  his  own  ideas  he  was  very  kind.  But  the 
youngest  sister  always  wanted  to  have  her  own  way  and 
one  day  when  she  was  feeling  very  cross  because  her  father 
had  told  her  she  was  to  go  and  stay  with  an  aunt,  who 
should  come  riding  along  a  lane  but " 

"That  man,"  interrupted  Michael,  greatly  excited. 

"A  rider  on  horseback.  And  he  said  'good  morning,' 
and  she  said  'good  morning,'  though  she  had  no  business  to." 

"Why  hadn't  she?" 

"Because  it  isn't  right  for  girls  to  speak  to  riders  on 
horseback  without  being  introduced.  But  the  rider  was 
very  handsome  and  brave  and  after  that  they  met  very 
often,  and  then  one  day  he  said,  'Won't  you  ride  away 
with  me?'  and  she  rode  away  with  him  and  never  saw  her 
father  or  her  sisters  or  the  old  house  any  more." 

Mrs.  Fane  had  turned  her  face  to  the  sunset  again. 

"Is  that  all?"  Michael  asked. 

"That's  all." 

"Was  they  happy  ever  afterwards?" 

"Very  happy — too  happy." 

"Are  they  happy  now?" 

"Very  happy — too  happy." 

"Did  they  live  in   a  castle?" 

"Sometimes,  and  sometimes  they  lived  in  a  beautiful 
ship  and  went  sailing  away  to  the  most  beautiful  cities  in 
the  world." 

"Can't  Michael  go  with  you?"  he  asked. 

"Darling  boy,    it's   a   fairy-tale." 

"Is   it?"   he   said   doubtfully. 


THE    NEW   WORLD  21 

The  two  wonderful  months  were  over.  One  long  day 
of  packing  up  was  the  end  of  them,  and  when  they  got  back 
to  London  there  was  more  packing  up,  after  a  few  days 
of  which  Mrs.  Fane  took  Michael  in  her  arms  and  kissed 
him  good-bye  and  told  him  to  be  very  good.  Michael  tried 
not  to  cry;  but  the  tears  were  forced  out  by  a  huge  lump 
in  his  throat,  when  he  saw  a  cab  at  the  door,  pointing  the 
other  way  from  London.  He  could  not  bear  the  heaped-up 
luggage  and  Nurse's  promises  of  sitting  up  late  that  eve- 
ning for  a  great  treat.  He  did  not  want  to  sit  up  late,  and 
when  his  mother  whispered  there  was  a  surprise  for  him  in 
the  drawing-room,  he  did  not  care  at  all  for  a  surprise. 
But  nothing  could  make  the  minutes  stay  still.  He  was 
allowed  to  watch  the  cab  going  down  the  road,  but  he  had 
no  heart  to  wave  his  handkerchief  in  farewell,  and  when 
presently  he  went  back  with  Nurse  into  the  thin  red  house 
and  was  triumphantly  led  into  the  drawing-room,  he  was 
not  raised  to  any  particular  happiness  by  the  lancer's  uni- 
form displayed  on  a  large  square  of  cardboard.  He  suffered 
himself  to  be  dressed  up  and  to  have  the  scarlet  breast- 
plate strapped  around  him  and  the  plumed  helmet  to  be 
pushed  over  his  nose  and  the  sabretache  to  be  entangled 
with  his  legs;  but  there  was  no  spirit  of  hope  and  adven- 
ture flaming  in  his  breast — only  an  empty  feeling  and  a 
desire  to  look  out  of  the  night-nursery  window  at  the 
trains  going  by  with  happy  people  inside. 


CHAPTER    II 
BITTERSWEET 

HIS  mother's  absence  made  very  sad  for  Michael 
the  tall  thin  house  in  Carlington  Road.  He 
felt  enclosed  in  the  restraint  from  which  his 
mother  had  flown  like  a  bird.  Time  stretched  before  him 
in  unimaginable  reckonings.  It  was  now  the  beginning 
of  autumn,  and  the  leaves  of  the  lime  trees,  falling  to  lie 
stained  and  unlovely  in  sodden  basements,  moved  Michael 
with  a  sense  of  the  long  winter  before  him,  with  the  un- 
ending black  nights  and  the  dark  wet  dawns.  From  the 
window  of  the  night-nursery  he  recognized  for  the  first 
time  the  beauty  of  the  unsymmetrical  plane  tree  that  now, 
when  the  poplars  were  mere  swishing  bundles  of  twigs,  still 
defied  the  October  winds  with  wide  green  leaves.  Soon, 
however,  by  a  damp  frost  the  plane  tree  was  conquered, 
and  its  blobs  jigged  to  November  gusts.  Fogs  began,  and 
the  morning-room  was  always  gaslit,  even  for  dinner  at  one 
o'clock.  Stella  was  peevish,  and  games  became  impossible. 
The  two  black  kittens  were  an  entertainment  an^  took 
part  w^ith  Michael  in  numberless  dramas  of  revenge  and 
punishment,  of  remorse  and  exaggerated  cherishing.  These 
histrionic  pastimes  became  infused  with  a  terrible  reality, 
when  one  day  the  favorite  kitten  jumped  from  Michael's 
arms  over  the  banisters  and  fell  on  to  the  tiled  floor  of  the 
hall,  hurting  herself  internally  so  that  she  had  to  be 
poisoned.     He  stood  by  her  grave  in  the  blackened  mould 

22 


BITTERSWEET  23 

of  the  garden,  and  wished  poignantly  that  he  had  never 
spoken  harshly  to  her,  had  never  banished  her  to  a  waste- 
paper  basket  prison  for  the  length  of  a  long  foggy  afternoon. 

Christmas  arrived  with  more  uniforms,  with  a  fishmon- 
ger's shop  and  a  mechanical  mackerel  which  when  wound 
up  would  click  in  finny  progress  from  one  end  of  the  bath 
to  the  other  and  back.  It  was  wound  up  every  Sunday 
afternoon  for  a  treat,  and  was  afterwards  replaced  in  a 
high  corner-cupboard  that  always  attracted  Michael's  ex- 
treme curiosity  and  was  the  object  of  many  vows  to  solve 
its  secret,  when  he  grew  bigger.  All  these  presents  came 
from  his  mother  together  with  half  a  dozen  books.  He 
received  no  other  presents  except  from  the  household. 
Nurse  gave  him  a  china  house  romantic  when  illuminated 
by  a  nightlight;  Annie  shyly  placed  before  him  a  crystal 
globe  that  when  shaken  gave  a  wonderful  reproduction 
of  a  snow-storm  falling  upon  a  weather-worn  tin  figure 
with  a  green  face,  blue  legs  and  an  unpainted  coat.  Mrs. 
Frith,  the  cook,  gave  him  a  box  of  tops,  none  of  which 
he  or  she  or  anyone  else  could  spin.  In  addition  to  these 
presents  Santa  Claus  allowed  him  on  a  still  December 
night  an  orange,  an  apple,  a  monkey  on  a  stick,  five  nuts 
(three  of  them  bad)  and  a  selection  of  angular  sweets.  As 
Michael  with  foresight  had  hung  up  two  of  Nurse's  stock- 
ings as  well  as  his  own  socks,  he  felt  slightly  resentful 
towards  Santa  Claus  for  the  meager  response. 

Christmas  passed  away  in  a  week  of  extravagant  rain, 
and  a  visit  was  paid  to  the  pantomime  of  Valentine  and 
Orson  at  the  Surrey  Theater  that  reduced  Michael  to  a 
state  of  collapse  owing  to  the  fight  between  the  two  pro- 
tagonists, in  which  Orson's  fingers  were  lacerated  by  the 
glittering  sword  of  Valentine.  Nurse  vainly  assured  him 
the  blood  was  so  much  red  paint.  He  howled  the  louder 
and  dreamed  ghastly  dreams  for  a  month  afterwards. 

About  this  time  Michael  read  many  books  in  a  strange 


24  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

assortment.  Nurse  had  a  collection  of  about  a  dozen  In 
her  trunk  from  which  Michael  was  allowed  to  read  three 
to  himself.  These  were  The  Lamplighter,  The  Arabian 
Nights  in  a  small  paper-bound  volume  of  diminutive  print 
and  a  Tale  of  the  Black  Rising  in  Jamaica  which  included 
an  earthquake.  In  The  Arabian  Nights  he  read  over  and 
over  again  the  stories  of  Aladdin,  The  Forty  Thieves  and 
Sindbad,  owing  to  their  familiarity  through  earlier  narra- 
tives. On  Sunday  afternoons  Nurse  always  read  aloud 
from  Baring-Gould's  Lives  of  the  Saints  and  Mrs.  Gatti's 
Parables  from  Nature,  and  told  the  story  of  Father  Ma- 
chonochie's  death  in  Argyll  and  of  his  faithful  Skye  ter- 
riers whose  portraits  she  piously  possessed  in  Oxford  frames. 
Michael's  own  books  included  at  this  period  several 
zoological  works,  the  Swiss  Family  Robinson,  Holiday 
House,  Struwwelpeter,  Daddy  Darwin's  Dovecote,  Jacka- 
napes, The  Battles  of  the  British  Army  and  an  abbreviated 
version  of  Robinson  Crusoe. 

The  winter  and  cold  wet  spring  dragged  by.  Day  by 
day  life  varied  very  little.  In  the  morning  after  breakfast, 
if  it  was  fairly  fine,  a  visit  would  be  paid  to  Kensington 
Gardens,  a  dull  business;  for  the  Round  Pond  was  not 
visited,  and  indeed  the  Gardens  were  only  penetrated  as 
far  as  the  Palace  with  occasional  promenades  along  the 
flower-walk  for  a  treat.  Treats  were  important  factors  in 
Michael's  life.  Apparently  anything  even  mildly  pleasant 
came  under  the  category  of  treats.  It  was  a  treat  to  walk 
on  the  grass  in  the  Gardens;  it  was  a  treat  to  help  to  push 
Stella's  perambulator;  it  was  a  treat  to  have  the  sponge 
floating  beside  him  in  the  bath,  to  hum,  to  laugh,  to  read, 
to  stay  up  one  minute  after  half-past  six,  to  accompany 
Nurse  on  her  marketing,  and  most  of  all  to  roll  the  slabs 
of  unbaked  dough  down  in  the  kitchen.  The  great  prin- 
ciple of  a  treat  was  its  rarity.  As  anything  that  had  to  be 
asked   for  became  a  treat  automatically  and   as  the  mere 


BITTERSWEET  25 

fact  of  asking  was  made  a  reason  for  refusing  to  grant  a 
treat,  the  sacred  infrequency  of  the  treat  was  secured.  The 
result  of  this  was  that  the  visit  to  Kensington  Gardens 
instead  of  being  the  jolly  business  it  seemed  to  be  for  other 
children,  became  a  tantalizing  glimpse  of  an  unattainable 
paradise.  Michael  would  stand  enraptured  by  the  March 
winds,  every  impulse  bidding  him  run  and  run  eternally 
through  the  blowy  spring  weather;  yet  if  he  so  much  as 
climbed  the  lowest  rung  of  the  scaly  park-railings,  if  he 
dallied  one  moment  to  watch  a  kite  launched  on  the  air, 
Nanny  would  haul  him  back  to  the  perambulator's  side. 
As  for  talking  to  other  children,  not  even  could  the  magic 
treat  effect  that.  If  Nurse  was  to  be  believed,  conversation 
with  strange  children  was  the  lowest  depth  to  which  hu- 
man nature  could  sink.  The  enforced  solitariness  of  his 
life  bred  in  Michael  a  habit  of  contemplation.  Much  of 
his  morning  walk  was  passed  in  a  dream  in  which  he  seemed 
to  be  standing  still  while  the  world  of  houses  and  trees 
and  railings  and  people  swam  by  him  unheeded.  This 
method  of  existence  led  to  several  unpleasant  shocks,  as 
when  he  walked  into  a  lamp-post  and  bruised  his  nose. 
Nanny  used  to  jeer  at  him,  calling  him  Little  Johnny 
Hcad-in-air;  but  Michael  was  so  much  used  to  her  deroga- 
tory opinions  that  he  cared  very  little  and  made  no  attempt 
to  cure  himself  of  the  habit,  but  even  encouraged  himself 
to  put  himself  into  these  nihilistic  trances. 

It  was  probably  owing  to  this  habit  that  one  morning 
Michael,  looking  round  in  Kensington  Gardens,  could 
discern  no  familiar  figure.  He  was  by  himself  in  the 
middle  of  a  broad  gravel  walk.  Nurse  and  the  perambula- 
tor had  vanished.  For  a  moment  a  sickening  horror  seized 
him.  He  would  never  see  Carlington  Road  again;  he 
would  never  see  Stella  or  his  mother;  he  would  never  go 
to  the  seaside;  he  was  lost.  Then  he  recalled  to  himself 
the  knowledge  of  his  name  and  address;  he  reassured  him- 
8 


2  6  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

self  by  repeating  both  aloud,  Charles  Michael  Saxby  Fane, 
64  Carlington  Road,  Kensington.  A  name  and  address 
he  had  often  been  warned  was  a  talisman  to  enlist  the 
service  of  policemen.  His  heart  beat  more  gently  again; 
his  breathing  became  normal.  He  looked  around  him  at 
the  world  seen  for  the  first  time  with  freedom's  eyes. 
With  waves  of  scent  the  beds  of  hyacinths  impressed  them- 
selves upon  his  memory.  He  w^as  free  under  a  great  gusty 
sky,  free  to  climb  railings,  to  pick  up  shells  from  the 
gravel  walk,  to  lie  on  his  back  in  the  grass  and  brood  upon 
the  huge  elm-trees  that  caught  the  clouds  in  their  net. 
Michael  wandered  along  to  a  drinking-fountain  to  which 
access  had  often  been  forbidden.  He  drank  four  cups  of 
water  from  the  captive  metal  mug;  he  eyed  curiously  the 
many  children  who,  as  free  as  himself,  ran  up  and  down 
the  steps  of  the  fountain.  He  wished  for  barley-sugar  that 
he  might  offer  it  to  them  and  earn  their  approbation  and 
company.  He  was  particularly  attracted  to  one  group 
consisting  of  three  funny  little  girls  with  splashed  pinafores 
and  holes  in  their  stockings,  and  of  two  little  boys  with  holes 
in  their  knickerbockers  and  half-peeled  sticks.  The  group 
moved  away  from  the  fountain  and  Michael  followed  at  a 
distance.  The  group  turned  somersaults  over  the  highest 
railings  and  Michael  watched  it  hungrily.  The  group 
strolled  on,  the  girls  nonchalant  and  enlaced,  the  boj^s  still 
peeling  their  sticks  with  perseverance.  Michael  squeezed 
through  the  railings,  and  followed  in  the  group's  wake. 
The  two  boys  finished  peeling  their  sticks  and  pushed  over 
in  a  heap  the  three  little  girls.  There  were  laughter  and 
shouting,  and  a  confusion  of  pinafores  and  black  stockings 
and  hair  and  caps.  Michael  stood  close  to  them,  wide- 
eyed  with  admiration.  Suddenly  the  group  realized  his 
propinquity  and  flocked  together  critically  to  eye  him. 
Michael  became  self-conscious  and  turned  away;  he  heard 
giggling   and    spluttering.      He   blushed   with   shame   and 


BITTERSWEET  27 

began  to  run.  In  a  moment  he  fell  over  a  tuft  of  grass 
and  the  group  jeered  openly.  He  picked  himself  up  and 
fled  toward  the  gate  of  the  Gardens,  anxious  only  to  escape 
ridicule.  He  ran  on  with  beating  heart,  with  quickening 
breath  and  sobs  that  rose  in  his  throat  one  after  another 
like  bubbles,  breaking  because  he  ran  so  fast.  He  was  in 
Kensington  High  Street,  among  the  thickening  crowds  of 
people.  He  seemed  to  hear  pursuing  shouts  and  mocking 
laughter.  At  last  he  saw  a  policeman  whose  tunic  he 
clutched    desperately. 

'What's  all  this  about?"  demanded  the  constable. 

"Please,  my  name  is  Charles  Michael  Saxby  Fane  and 
I  live  at  64  Carlington  Road  and  I  want  to  go  home." 

Michael  burst  into  tears  and  the  policeman  bent  over 
and  led  him  by  a  convulsed  hand  to  the  police  station. 
There  he  was  seated  in  a  wooden  chair,  while  various 
policemen  in  various  states  of  undress  came  and  talked 
kindly  to  him,  and  in  the  end,  riding  on  the  shoulder  of 
his  original  rescuer,  he  arrived  at  the  tall  thin  house  from 
whose  windows  Nurse  was  peering,  anxious  and  monkey- 
like. 

There  seemed  to  be  endless  talk  about  his  adventure. 
All  day  the  affair  was  discussed,  all  day  he  was  questioned 
and  worried  and  scolded  and  threatened.  Treats  faded 
from  possible  granting  for  months  to  come.  Restrictions 
and  repressions  assumed  gigantic  proportions,  and  it  was 
not  until  Nanny  went  upstairs  to  put  Stella  to  bed  and  left 
Michael  in  the  kitchen  with  Mrs.  Frith  and  Annie  that  his 
adventure  came  to  seem  a  less  terrible  breach'  of  natural 
law.  Away  from  Nurse,  the  cook  and  the  housemaid 
allowed  a  splendid  laxity  to  gild  their  point  of  view. 

"Well,  what  a  fuss  about  nothing,"  said  Mrs.  Frith 
comfortably.  "I  declare.  And  what  was  she  doing? 
That's  what  some  people  would  like  to  know.     You  can't 


2  8  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

lose  a  child  the  same  as  you  might  lay  down  a  thimble.  I 
call  it  very  careless." 

"Yes.  What  a  shame!"  Annie  agreed.  "Supposing  he'd 
of  been  run  over." 

"He  might  of  been  run  over  a  dozen  times,"  said  Mrs. 
Frith.  "It's  all  very  fine  to  put  all  the  blame  on  the 
poor  child,  but  what  was  she  doing?" 

Then  Mrs.  Frith  closed  her  right  eye,  tightened  her 
mouth  and  very  slowly  nodded  her  head  until  the  most  of 
her  pleated  chin  was  buried  in  the  bib  of  her  apron. 

"That's  what  I  thought,"  said  Annie  mysteriously. 

"What  did  you  think,  Annie?"  Michael  asked  fretfully. 

"She  thought  you  hadn't  no  business  to  be  so  daring," 
said  Mrs.  Frith.  "But  there!  Well!  And  I  was  daring 
mj^self.  Very  daring  /  was.  Out  and  about.  Hollering 
after  bojs.  The  slappings  I've  had.  But  I  enjoyed  myself. 
And  if  I  sat  down  a  bit  tender,  that's  better  than  a  sore 
heart,  I  used  to  think." 

"I  expect  you  enjoyed  yourself,"  said  Annie.  "I  was 
one  of  the  quiet  ones,  I  was.  Any  little  trip,  and  I  was 
sick." 

"Couldn't  bear  the  motion,   I  suppose?"  Cook  inquired. 

"Oh,  it  wasn't  the  traveling  as  did  it.  It  was  the  excite- 
ment. I  was  dreadfully  sick  in  the  crypt  of  St.  Paul's 
Cathedral." 

"What  a  grand  place  it  is,  though,"  said  Mrs.  Frith, 
nodding.  "Oh,  beautiful.  So  solemn.  I've  sat  there  with 
my  late  husband,  eating  nuts  as  peaceful  as  if  we  was  in  a 
real  church.  Beautiful.  And  that  whispering  gallery! 
The  things  you  hear.  Oh — well.  I  like  a  bit  of  fun,  I  do. 
I   remember " 

Then  Nurse  came  downstairs,  and  Michael  was  taken 
up  to  bed  away  from  w^hat  he  knew  would  be  an  enthral- 
ling conversation  between  Annie  and  Cook.     It  was  hateful 


BITTERSWEET  29 

to  be  compelled  to  march  up  ail  those  stairs  farther  and 
farther  away  from  the  cheerful  voices  in  the  basement. 

August  arrived  without  bringing  Michael's  mother,  and 
he  did  not  care  for  the  days  by  the  sea  without  her.  Stella, 
to  be  sure,  was  beginning  to  show  signs  of  one  day  being  an 
intelligent  companion,  but  Nurse  under  the  influence  of 
heat  grew  more  repressive  than  ever,  and  the  whole  seaside 
ached  with  his  mother's  absence.  Michael  was  not  allowed 
to  speak  to  strange  children  and  was  still  dependent  on 
rare  treats  to  illuminate  his  dullness.  The  landlady's  hus- 
band, Mr.  Wagland,  played  the  harmonium  and  made 
jokes  with  Nurse,  while  Mrs.  Wagland  sang  hymns  and 
whispered  with  Nurse.  A  gleam  of  variety  came  into 
Michael's  life  when  Mr.  Wagland  told  him  he  could  catch 
birds  by  putting  salt  on  their  tails,  and  for  many  afternoons, 
always  with  a  little  foolscap  of  salt,  Michael  walked  about 
the  sunburnt  grass  patch  in  front  of  the  house,  waiting 
for  sparrows  to  perch  and  vainly  flinging  pinches  of  salt 
in  the  direction  of  their  tails. 

Church  was  more  exciting  by  the  seaside  than  at  home, 
where  every  Sunday  morning  during  the  long  sermon 
Michael  subsided  slowly  from  a  wooden  bench  in  the  gallery 
on  to  a  disembowelled  hassock,  or  languished  through  the 
Litany  with  a  taste  of  varnish  in  his  mouth  caused  by  an 
attempt  to  support  his  endurance  by  licking  the  back  of 
the  pew  in  front.  Nurse  told  him  of  wonderful  churches 
with  music  and  incense  and  candles  and  scarlet  and  lace, 
but  for  some  reason  of  inexplicable  contrariness,  she  took 
Michael  to  an  old  Calvinistic  church  with  a  fire-breathing 
vicar,  a  sniffling  vicar's  wife  and  a  curate  who  sometimes 
clasped  Michael's  head  with  a  damp  hand  that  always  felt 
as  if  it  were  still  there  when  it  had  long  been  rem.oved, 
like  a  cold  linseed  poultice.  Now  at  the  seaside,  Michael 
went  to  a  beautiful  church  and  was  so  much  excited  by  the 
various  events  that  he  pressed  forward,  peering  on  tiptoe. 


30  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Luckily  the  two  ladies  in  front  of  him  were  so  devout  and 
bobbed  up  and  down  so  often  that  he  was  able  to  see  most 
of  what  was  happening.  How  he  longed  to  be  the  little 
boy  in  scarlet  who  carried  a  sort  of  silver  sauce-boat  and 
helped  to  spoon  what  looked  like  brown  sugar  into  the 
censer.  Once  during  a  procession,  Michael  stepped  out 
into  the  aisle  and  tried  to  see  what  actually  was  carried 
in  the  boat.  But  the  boat-boy  put  out  his  tongue  very 
quickly,  as  he  walked  piously  by,  and  glared  at  Michael 
very  haughtily,  being  about  the  same  size. 

After  submitting  without  pleasure  to  a  farewell  kiss 
from  Mrs.  Wagland  and  after  enduring  much  shame  on 
account  of  Stella's  behavior  in  the  crowded  railway  car- 
riage, Michael  came  back  to  Carlington  Road.  During  the 
space  between  arrival  and  bed-time  he  was  gently  happy 
in  w^elcoming  his  toys  and  books,  in  marvelling  at  the  quick 
growth  of  the  black  kitten  and  in  a  brief  conversation  with 
Mrs.  Frith  and  Annie;  but  on  the  next  morning,  which  was 
wet  with  a  wetness  that  offered  no  prospect  of  ever  being 
dry,  he  was  depressed  by  the  thought  of  the  long  time  before 
Christmas,  by  the  foreboding  of  yellow  days  of  fog  and  the 
fact  that  to-morrow  was  Sunday.  He  had  been  told  to  sit 
in  the  dining-room  in  order  to  be  out  of  the  w^ay  during 
the  unpacking  and,  because  he  had  been  slow  in  choosing 
which  book  should  accompany  him,  he  had  been  called 
Mr.  Particular  and  compelled  to  take  the  one  book  of  all 
others  that  he  now  felt  was  most  impossible  even  to  open. 
So  Michael  sat  in  the  bay-window  and  stared  at  the  rainy 
street.  How  it  rained,  not  ferociously  as  in  a  summer 
storm,  when  the  surface  of  the  road  was  blurred  with  rain- 
drops and  the  water  poured  along  the  gutters,  carrying 
t\vigs  and  paper  and  orange-peel  towards  the  drain,  and 
when  there  almost  seemed  a  chance  of  a  second  flood,  an 
event  Michael  did  not  fear,  having  made  up  his  mind  to 
float  on  an  omnibus  to  the  top  of  the  Albert  Hall  which 


BITTERSWEET  31 

had  once  impressed  him  with  its  perfect  security.  Now  it 
was  raining  with  the  dreary  mediocrity  of  winter,  dripping 
from  the  balcony  above  on  to  the  sill  below,  trickling  down 
the  window-panes,  lying  in  heavy  puddles  about  the  road, 
a  long  monotonous  gray  soak.  He  sighed  as  he  looked  out 
of  the  window  at  the  piece  of  waste  ground  opposite  that 
was  bordered  in  front  by  a  tumbledown  fence  and  sur- 
rounded on  the  three  other  sides  by  the  backs  of  gray 
houses.  A  poor  old  woman  was  picking  groundsel  with  a 
melancholy  persistence,  and  the  torn  umbrella  w^hich  wav- 
ered above  her  bent  form  made  her  look  like  a  scarecrow. 
Presently  round  the  corner  a  boy  appeared  walking  very 
jauntily.  He  had  neither  coat  nor  waistcoat  nor  shoes  nor 
stockings,  his  shirt  was  open  in  front,  and  a  large  piece  of 
it  stuck  out  behind  through  his  breeches;  but  he  did  not 
seem  to  mind  either  the  rain  or  his  tattered  clothes.  He 
whistled  as  he  walked  along  with  one  hand  stuck  in  his 
braces  and  with  the  other  banging  the  wooden  fence.  He 
went  by  with  tousled  hair  and  dirty  face,  a  glorious  figure 
of  freedom  in  the  rain.  Michael  envied  him  passionately, 
this  untrammelled  fence-banging  whistling  spirit;  and  for 
a  long  time,  this  boy  walked  before  Michael's  aspirations, 
leading  them  to  his  own  merry  tune.  Michael  would  often 
think  of  this  boy  and  wonder  what  he  was  doing  and  say- 
ing. He  made  up  his  mind  in  the  beeswaxed  dining-room 
that  it  was  better  to  be  a  raggle-taggle  wanderer  than  any- 
thing else.  He  watched  the  boy  disappear  round  the  farther 
corner,  and  wished  that  he  could  disappear  in  such  com- 
pany round  corner  after  corner  of  the  world  beyond  the 
gray    house-backs. 

The  climax  of  this  wet  morning's  despair  was  reached, 
when  a  chimney-sweep  came  into  sight,  whooping  and  hal- 
loaing nearer  and  nearer.  Of  the  many  itinerant  terrors 
that  haunted  polite  roads,  Michael  dreaded  sweeps  most 
b£  all.     So  he  hastily  climbed  down  from  the  chair  in  the 


32  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

window  and  sat  under  the  dining-room  table  until  the 
sound  had  passed,  shivering  with  apprehension  lest  it  should 
stop  by  number  Sixty-four.  It  went  by,  however,  without 
pausing,  and  Michael  breathed  more  freely,  but  just  as  he 
was  cautiously  emerging  from  the  table,  there  was  an  extra 
loud  postman's  knock  which  drove  him  back  in  a  panic, 
so  that  when  Nurse  came  fussing  in  to  fetch  him  to  wash 
his  hands  for  dinner,  he  had  to  invent  a  plausible  excuse 
for  such  a  refuge.  As  he  could  not  find  one,  he  was  told 
that  for  a  punishment  he  could  not  be  allowed  to  hear  the 
message  his  mother  had  written  at  the  end  of  what  was 
evidently  a  very  important  letter,  to  judge  by  the  many 
tut-tuts  the  reading  of  it  provoked  Nurse  to  click. 

However,  under  the  influence  of  tea  Nanny  softened, 
and  the  message  was  read  just  as  the  rain  stopped  and  the 
sun  glittered  through  the  day-nursery  window  right  across 
the  room  in  a  wide  golden  bar. 

COMO. 

Darling  Michael: 

You  are  to  go  to  kindergarten  which  you  will  enjoy. 
You  will  only  go  for  the  mornings  and  you  will  have  to 
learn  all  sorts  of  jolly  things — music  and  painting  and 
writing.  Then  you'll  be  able  to  write  to  Mother.  I'm 
sure  you'll  be  good  and  work  hard,  so  that  when  Mother 
comes  home  at  Christmas  you'll  be  able  to  show  her  what 
a  clever  boy  she  has.  You  would  like  to  be  in  this  beautiful 
place.  As  I  write  I  can  see  such  lovely  hills  and  fields  and 
lakes  and  mountains.  I  hope  darling  Stella  is  learning  to 
say  all  sorts  of  interesting  things.  I  can't  find  any  nice 
present  to  send  you  from  here,  so  I've  told  Nanny  that 
you  and  she  can  go  and  buy  tw^o  canaries,  one  for  you  and 
one  for  Stella — a  boy  canary  and  a  girl  canary.  Won't 
that  be  fun?     Love  and  kisses  from 

Mother. 

Michael  sat  in  a  dream  when  the  letter  was  finished. 
It  had  raised  so  many  subjects  for  discussion  and  was  so 
wonderful  that  he  could  scarcely  speak. 


BITTERSWEET  33 

^'Will  mother  really  come  home  at  Christmas?"  he 
asked. 

"You  heard  what  I  said." 

"Christmas!"  he  sighed  happily. 

"Aren't  you  glad  to  go  to  school?"  Nurse  wanted  to 
know. 

"Yes,  but  I'd  like  Christmas  to  come,"  he  said. 

"Was  there  ever  in  this  world  anyone  so  hard  to  please  ?'* 
Nurse  apostrophized. 

"When  will  we  go  to  get  these  canaries,  Nanny?" 

"Plenty  of  time.     Plenty  of  time." 

"Soon,  will  we?" 

"One  more  question  and  there'll  be  no  canaries  at  all," 
said  Nurse. 

However,  the  sun  shone  so  brightly,  and  the  prospect 
of  a  visit  to  Hammersmith  Broadway  on  a  Saturday  after- 
noon appealed  so  strongly  to  Nurse  that  she  put  on  her 
bonnet  and  trotted  off  with  Michael  up  Carlington  Road, 
and  stopped  a  red  omnibus,  and  fussed  her  way  into  it,  and 
held  the  tickets  in  her  mouth  while  she  put  away  her  purse, 
and  told  Michael  not  to  fidget  with  his  legs  and  not  to  look 
round  behind  him  at  w^hat  was  passing  on  that  side  of  the 
road,  until  at  last  they  arrived.  The  canary-shop  was 
found,  and  two  canaries  and  a  bird-cage  were  bought 
together  with  packets  of  seed  and  a  bird's  bath  and  a 
pennyworth  of  groundsel  and  plaintains.  Nurse  told 
Michael  to  wait  in  the  shop  while  the  birds  were  being 
prepared  for  travelling,  and  while  she  herself  went  to  the 
chemist  to  buy  a  remedy  for  the  neuralgia  which  she 
prophesied  was  imminent.  Michael  talked  to  the  canary- 
man  and  asked  a  lot  of  questions  which  the  canary-man 
seemed  very  glad  to  answer;  and  finally  Nurse,  looking 
much  better,  came  back  from  the  chemist  with  a  large 
bottle  wrapped  up  in  a  newspaper.  In  the  omnibus,  going 
home,  Michael  never  took  his  eyes  from  the  cage,  anxious 


34  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

to  see  how  the  birds  bore  the  jolting.  Sometimes  the)^  said 
"sweet,"  and  then  Michael  would  say  "sweet,"  and  a 
pleasant  old  lady  opposite  would  say  "sweet,"  and  soon  all 
the  people  inside  the  omnibus  were  saying  "sweet,"  except 
Nurse  who  was  chewing  her  veil  and  making  the  most 
extraordinary  faces. 

It  was  very  exciting  to  stand  on  tiptoe  in  the  kitchen 
while  Mrs.  Frith  cut  the  string  and  displayed  the  canaries 
in  all  the  splendor  of  their  cage. 

"Beautiful  things,"  said  Mrs.  Frith.  "Fm  that  fond 
of  birds." 

"Don't  they  hop?"  said  Annie.  "Not  a  bit  frightened 
they  don't  seem,  do  they?" 

"What  are  their  names?"  Mrs.  Frith  inquired. 

Michael  thought  for  a  long  time. 

"What  are  their  names,  Mrs.  Frith?"  he  asked  at  last. 

"That's  your  business,"  said  Cook. 

"Why  is  it?"  Michael  wanted  to  know. 

"Because  they're  your  birds,  stupid." 

"One's  Stella's." 

"Well,  Stella  isn't  old  enough  to  choose  for  herself. 
Come  along,  what  are  you  going  to  call  them?" 

"You  call  them,"  said  Michael  persuasively. 

"Well,  if  they  was  mine  I  should  call  them "  Cook 

paused. 

"What  would  you?"  said  Michael,  more  persuasively 
than  ever. 

"Fm  blessed  if  I  know.  There,  Annie,  what  does  any- 
one call  a  canary?" 

"Don't  ask  me.     Fm  sure.     No,"  simpered  Annie. 

"I  shouldn't  call  them  nothing,  I  shouldn't,"  Mrs. 
Frith  finally  decided.     "It  isn't  like  dogs." 

"What's  the  matter?"  said  Nurse,  bustling  into  the 
kitchen.     "Has  one  got  out?     Has  one  got  out?" 

"I  was  telling   Master   Michael  here,"   said   Cook,    "as 


BITTERSWEET 


35 


how  I  shouldn't  call  neither  of  them  nothing.  Not  if  I 
was  he." 

''Call  what?     Call  what?"    Nurse  asked  quickly 

"His  new  dicky-birds." 

"Must  have  names.  Yes.  Yes.  Must  have  names. 
Dick  and  Tom.    Dick  and  Tom." 

"But  one's  a  girl,"  Michael  objected. 

"Can't  be  changed  now.  Must  be  Dick  and  Tom," 
Nurse  settled,  blowing  rapidly  as  usual. 

The  decision  worried  Michael  considerably,  but  as  they 
both  turned  out  to  be  hens  and  laid  twenty-three  eggs 
between  them  next  spring,  it  ceased  to  bother  him  any  more. 

The  Misses  Marrow's  School  and  Kindergarten,  kept  by 
Miss  Marrow  and  Miss  Caroline  Marrow  assisted  by  Miss 
Hewitt  and  Miss  Hunt,  struck  Michael  as  a  very  solemn 
establishment  indeed.  Although  its  outward  appearance 
was  merely  that  of  an  ordinary  house  somewhat  larger  than 
others  on  account  of  its  situation  at  the  corner  of  Fairfax 
Terrace,  it  contained  inside  a  variety  of  scholastic  furniture 
that  was  bound  to  impress  the  novice. 

At  twenty  minutes  past  nine  on  the  first  day  of  the 
autumn  term.  Nurse  and  Michael  stood  before  a  brass 
plate  inscribed: 


The    Misses    Marrow 
School   and   Kindergarten 


while  a  bell  still  jangled  with  the  news  of  their  arrival. 
They  were  immediately  shown  into  a  very  small  and  very 
stuffy  room  on  the  right  of  the  front  door — a  gloomy  little 
room,   because   blinds   of   colored   beads   shut   out  the   un- 


36  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

scholastic  world.  This  room  was  uncomfortably  crowded 
with  little  girls  taking  off  goloshes  and  unlacing  long  brown 
boots,  with  little  boys  squabbling  over  their  indoor  shoes, 
with  little  girls  chatting  and  giggling  and  pushing  and 
bumping,  with  little  boys  shouting  and  quarreling  and  kick- 
ing and  pulling.  A  huddled  and  heated  knot  of  nurses  and 
nursemaids  tried  to  help  their  charges,  while  every  minute 
more  little  boys  and  more  little  girls  and  more  bigger  girls 
pushed  their  w^ay  in  and  made  the  confusion  worse.  In 
the  middle  of  the  uproar  Miss  Marrow  herself  entered 
and  the  noise  was  instantly  lulled. 

"The  new  boys  will  wait  in  here  and  the  new  girls  will 
quietly  follow  Helen  Hungerford  down  the  passage  to 
Miss  Caroline's  room.     Nurses  need  not  wait  any  longer." 

Then  a  bell  vibrated  shrilly.  There  was  a  general 
scamper  as  the  nurses  and  the  nursemaids  and  the  old  boys 
and  the  old  girls  hurried  from  the  room,  leaving  Michael 
and  two  other  boys,  both  about  tw^o  years  older  than  him- 
self, to  survey  each  other  with  suspicion.  The  other  boys 
finding  Michael  beneath  the  dignity  of  their  notice  spoke 
to  each  other,  or  rather  the  larger  of  the  two,  a  long- 
bodied  boy  with  a  big  head  and  vacant  mouth,  said  to  the 
other,  a  fidgety  boy  with  a  pink  face,  a  frog-like  smile  and 
very  tight  knickerbockers: 

"I  say,  what's  your  name?" 

The  pink-faced  boy  gulped,  "Edward  Ernest  Arnott. 

"What  is  it  then?"  asked  the  long-bodied  boy. 

"Arnott  is  my  surname.  Edward  and  Ernest,"  he 
gulped   again,   "are  my   Christian  names." 

"Mine's  Vernon  Brown.     I  say,  what's  your  father?" 

"A  solicitor,"  said  Edward.     "What's  yours?" 

"A  cricket — I  mean  a  critic,"  said  Vernon. 

"What's  that?" 

This  seemed  to  upset  the  long-bodied  boy  who  replied: 


BITTERSWEET  37 

"Coo!  Don't  you  know  what  a  cricket  is?  I  mean 
critic.     You   must  be  a  kid." 

Michael  thought  this  was  the  most  extraordinary  con- 
versation he  had  ever  heard.  Not  even  Mrs.  Frith  and 
Annie  could  be  so  incomprehensible. 

"I  don't  believe  you  know  yourself,"  said  the  pink-faced 
boy,   deepening  to  crimson. 

''Don't  I?     I  bet  I  do." 

"I  bet  you  don't." 

"I   know  better   than   you  anj^way." 

"So  do  I  than  you." 

Michael  would  have  found  a  conversation  between  two 
fox-terriers  more  intelligible.  It  ended  abruptly,  however, 
with  the  entrance  of  Miss  Marrow  who  waved  them  all  to 
follow  her  to  the  severity  of  her  own  room.  Edward 
Arnott  and  Vernon  Brown  were  dispatched  upstairs  to  take 
their  places  in  the  class  above  the  Kindergarten  for  which 
Michael  was  destined  and  whither  he  followed  Miss  Mar- 
row, wondering  at  the  size  and  ugliness  of  her.  Miss 
Marrow's  base  was  a  black  bell,  on  which  was  set  a  black 
cushion,  above  which  was  Miss  Marrow's  round  beetroot- 
colored  face.  Miss  Caroline  w^as  like  a  green  curtain 
through  the  folds  of  which  seemed  to  have  burst  a  red  face 
like  her  sister's  but  thinner.  Miss  Caroline  was  pleasanter 
than  Miss  Marrow  and  never  shouted,  perhaps  because  she 
was  never  without  a  cold  in  the  head. 

Michael  was  handed  over  to  the  care  of  Miss  Hewitt, 
the  Kindergarten  mistress,  who  was  very  kind  and  very 
jolly.  Michael  enjoyed  the  Kindergarten.  There  he 
learned  to  write  pothooks  and  hangers  and  very  soon  to 
write  proper  letters.  He  learned  to  sew  alternate  red  and 
blue  lines  of  wool  upon  a  piece  of  cardboard.  He  learned 
to  weave  bookmarkers  with  shining  slips  of  chocolate  and 
yellow  paper,  and  to  pleat  checkered  mats  of  the  same 
material;  these,  when  term  was  over,  appeared  at  the  prize- 


38  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

giving,  beautifully  enhanced  with  paper  frills  cut  by  the 
clever  Miss  Hewitt.  He  learned  to  paint  texts  and  to 
keep  his  pencil-box  tidy  and  to  play  the  treble  of  a  very 
unmelodious  duet  with  Miss  Hunt,  in  whose  bony  fingers 
his  own  fingers  would  from  time  to  time  get  entangled.  He 
tried  the  treble  without  the  bass  accompaniment  at  home 
on  Stella,  but  she  cried  and  seemed  as  Annie,  who  was  in 
charge,  said  "to  regular  shudder."  Altogether  Kindergarten 
was  a  pleasure  to  Michael,  and  he  found  the  days  went  by 
more  quickly,  though  still  far  too  slowly. 

About  a  week  before  Christmas  his  mother  came  back, 
and  Michael  was  happy.  All  the  rooms  that  were  only 
used  when  she  w^as  at  home  changed  from  bare  beeswaxed 
deserts  to  places  of  perfect  comfort,  so  rosy  were  the  lamp- 
shades, so  sweet  was  the  smell  of  flowers  and  so  soft  and 
lovely  were  his  mother's  scattered  belongings.  Christmas 
Day  brought  presents — a  box  of  stone  bricks,  a  rocking- 
horse,  a  doll's  house  for  Stella,  boxes  of  soldiers,  a  wooden 
battleship,  and  books — Hans  Andersen  and  Grimm  and  the 
Old  French  Fairy-tales.  As  for  the  stockings  that  year,  it 
was  amazing  how  much  managed  to  get  into  one  stocking 
and  how  deliciously  heavy  it  felt,  as  it  was  unhooked  from 
the  end  of  the  cot  and  plumped  down  upon  the  bed  in  the 
gaslight  of  Christmas  morning.  There  was  only  one  sad- 
ness that  hung  over  the  festivities — the  thought  that  his 
mother  would  be  going  away  in  two  days.  Boxing  Day 
arrived  and  there  were  ominous  open  trunks  and  the  scat- 
tered contents  of  drawers.  To-morrow  she  was  going.  It 
was  dreadful  to  think  of.  Michael  w^as  allowed  the  bitter 
joy  of  helping  his  mother  to  pack,  and  as  he  stood  seriously 
holding  various  articles  preparatory  to  their  entombment, 
he  talked  of  the  summer  and  heard  promises  that  mother 
would  spend  a  long,  long  time  with  Michael. 

"Mother,"  he  said  suddenly,   "what  is  my  father?" 

"What  makes  you  ask  that?" 


BITTERSWEET  39 

"The  boys  at  Miss  Marrow's  all  ask  me  that.  Have  I 
got  a  father?  Must  boys  have  fathers?  Oh,  mother,  do 
tell  me,"  pleaded  Michael. 

Mrs.   Fane   seemed  worried  by  this  question. 

"Your  father  was  a  gentleman,"  she  said  at  last. 

"What  is  a  gentleman?" 

"A  good  man,  always  thoughtful  and  considerate  to 
others." 

"Was  that  man  in  the  photograph  my  father?" 

"What  photograph?"  Mrs.  Fane  parried. 

"By  your  bed  at  the  seaside?" 

"I  don't  remember,"  she  said.  "Anyway,  your  father's 
dead." 

"Is  he?    Poor  man!"  said  sympathetic  Michael. 

"And  now  run  to  Nanny  and  ask  her  if  she  remembers 
where  mother  put  her  large  muff." 

"Nanny,"  said  Michael,  when  he  had  received  Nurse's 
information,  "why  did  my  father  die?" 

"Die?  Die?  What  questions.  Tut-tut!  Whatever 
next?"  And  Nurse  blew  very  violently  to  show  how 
deeply  she  disapproved  of  Michael's  inquisitiveness. 

That  evening  just  when  Michael  was  going  to  bed,  there 
came  a  knock  at  the  door,  and  a  tall  fair  man  w^as  shown 
into   the   drawing-room. 

"How  d'ye  do,  Mrs.  Fane?  I've  come  to  ask  you  if 
you'll  go  to  the  theater  to-night.  Saxby  is  coming  on 
later." 

"Oh,  thank  you  very  much,  Mr.  Prescott,  but  I  really 
think  I  must  stay  in.  You  see,"  she  said  smilingly,  "it's 
Michael's  last  night  of  me  for  a  long  time." 

Michael  stood  gazing  at  Mr.  Prescott,  hating  him  with 
all  his  might  and  sighing  relief  at  his  mother's  refusal  to 
go  out. 

"Oh,  Michael  won't  mind;  will  you,  Michael?" 


40  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Nurse  came  in  saying,  "Bed-time!  Tut-tut-tut!  Bed- 
time!" and  Michael's  heart  sank. 

"There  you  are,"  said  Mr.  Prescott.  "Here's  Nurse 
to  say  it's  bed-time.     Now  do  come,  Mrs.  Fane." 

"Oh,  I  really  think  I  ought  to  stay." 

"Now  what  nonsense.  Saxby  will  be  furiously  disap- 
pointed. You  must.  Come  along,  Michael,  be  a  brave 
chap  and  tell  your  mother  she's  got  to  go  out;  and  here's 
something  to  square  our  account." 

He  pressed  a  little  gold  coin  into  Michael's  unwilling 
hand. 

"Would  you  mind  very  much,  if  I  went?"  his  mother 
asked. 

"No,"  said  Michael  tonelessly.  The  room  was  swim- 
ming round  him  in  sickening  waves  of  disappointment. 

"Of  course  he  won't,"  decided  Mr.  Prescott  boisterously. 

While  he  was  being  undressed,  Nurse  asked  what  he  was 
holding.      Michael   showed   the  half-sovereign. 

"Spoiling  children,"  muttered  Nanny.  "That's  for  your 
money-box." 

Michael  did  not  care  what  it  was  for.  He  was  listening 
for  his  mother's  step.  She  came  in,  while  he  lay  round- 
eyed  in  his  cot,  and  leaned  over  to  kiss  him.  He  held  her 
to  him  passionately;  then  he  buried  his  face  in  the  bed- 
clothes and,  while  she  rustled  away  from  him,  sobbed 
soundlessly  for  a  long  while. 

In  the  morning  he  watched  her  go  away  until  the  warm 
summer-time  and  felt  abandoned  as  he  walked  through  the 
wintry  rooms,  where  lately  he  and  his  mother  had  sat  by 
the  fire.  As  for  the  ten-shilling  piece,  he  thought  no  more 
about  it.  Soon  afterwards  he  fell  ill  with  whooping-cough, 
he  and  Stella  together,  and  the  days  dragged  unendurably 
in  the  stuffy  nursery  away  from  school. 


CHAPTER  III 
FEARS    AND    FANTASIES 

DURING  whooping-cough  Michael  was  sometimes 
allowed  to  sit  in  a  room  called  the  library,  which 
w^as  next  to  his  mother's  bedroom  on  the  first 
floor  and  was  therefore  a  dearly  loved  resort.  Here  he 
discovered  the  large  volume  of  Don  Quixote  illustrated 
by  Dore  that  influenced  his  whole  life.  He  would  pore 
over  this  work  for  hours,  forgetting  everything  under  a 
spell  of  chivalry.  He  read  the  tale  seriously  and  thought 
it  the  saddest  tale  ever  known.  He  wept  over  the  knight's 
adventures,  and  big  teardrops  would  spatter  the  page.  He 
had  not  yet  encountered  much  more  than  mild  teasing  at 
the  Kindergarten,  that  with  the  unreasonableness  of  Nurse 
and  his  mother's  absence  made  up  the  sum  of  the  incom- 
prehensible crosses  which  he  had  to  bear.  But  even  these 
were  enough  to  make  him  sympathize  with  Don  Quixote. 
He  perceived  that  here  was  a  man  intent  upon  something 
— he  could  not  understand  exactly  what — thwarted  always 
by  other  people,  thwarted  and  jeered  at  and  even  physically 
maltreated.  Yet  he  was  a  man  whose  room  was  full  of 
dragons  and  fairies,  whose  counterpane  was  the  adventur- 
ous field  of  little  knights-at-arms,  whose  curtains  were 
rufliled  by  dwarfs,  whose  cupboards  held  enchanters. 
Michael  loved  the  tall  thin  knight  and  envied  Sancho 
Panza. 

When  whooping-cough  was  over,  and  Michael  went  back 

41 


42  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

to  Kindergarten,  Nurse  decided  that  he  should  sleep  by 
himself  in  the  room  next  to  the  night-nursery.  She  never 
explained  to  Michael  her  reasons  for  this  step,  and  he  sup- 
posed it  to  be  because  lately  he  had  always  waked  up  when 
she  came  to  bed.  This  was  not  his  fault,  because  Nurse 
always  bumped  into  his  cot,  as  she  came  into  the  room, 
shaking  it  so  violently  that  no  one  could  have  stayed  asleep. 
She  used  to  look  at  him  in  a  funny  way  with  angry  staring 
eyes,  and  when  he  sometimes  spoke  she  would  blow  cheese- 
scented  breath  at  him  and  turn  aw^ay  and  bump  into  the 
washstand. 

Everything  in  this  new  room  was  by  Michael  anticipated 
with  dread.  He  would  go  to  bed  at  half-past  six :  he  would 
settle  down  in  the  wide  white  bed  that  stretched  a  long  w^ay 
on  either  side  of  him:  the  gas  would  be  turned  down:  the 
door  would  be  left  ajar:  Nurse's  footsteps  would  gradually 
die  away  and  he  would  be  left  alone. 

The  night  was  divided  into  two  portions  of  equal  horror. 
First  of  all  he  had  to  concentrate  on  closing  his  mouth  when 
asleep,  because  Annie  had  told  him  a  tale  about  a  woman 
who  slept  with  her  mouth  open,  the  result  of  which  bad 
habit  was  that  one  night  a  mouse  ran  down  it  and  choked 
her.  Then  he  had  to  explore  cautiously  with  his  feet  the 
ice-cold  end  of  the  bed,  in  case  he  should  touch  a  nest  of 
mice — another  likely  occurrence  vouched  for  by  Annie. 
Then  outside,  various  sounds  would  frighten  him.  A  dog 
would  howl  in  the  distance :  cats  would  spit  and  wail,  mak- 
ing Michael  w^onder  whether  they  were  coming  through  his 
window  to  claw  his  face.  Presently,  far  up  the  street,  news- 
boys would  cry  hoarsely  the  details  of  a  murder  or  suicide. 
As  they  passed  beneath  his  bedroom  window,  their  voices 
would  swell  to  a  paralyzing  roar,  and  as  the  voices  died 
away  round  the  corner,  Michael  would  be  left  shaking  with 
fear.  Once  he  w^as  so  frightened  by  a  succession  of  these 
murder-shouts  that  he  got  out  of  bed  and  crept  forth  on  to 


FEARS    AND    FANTASIES  43 

the  landing  whence  he  peered  down  between  the  banisters 
into  the  quiet  red  light  burning  in  the  hall  far  below. 
While  he  was  leaning  over,  a  door  banged  suddenly  on  the 
top  floor,  and  Michael  fled  barefooted  down  the  stairs,  until 
he  reached  the  cold  tiles  of  the  front  hall.  Should  he  dare 
to  descend  still  lower  and  disturb  Nurse  at  her  supper  in 
the  kitchen  ?  Or  were  they  all  lying  there.  Cook  and  Annie 
and  Nurse,  with  their  throats  cut?  The  door  leading  to 
the  basement  stairs  was  open;  and  he  stole  down  over  the 
oilcloth,  past  the  yawning  cellar,  past  the  laundry-basket 
in  the  passage,  past  the  cupboard  under  the  stairs,  to  listen 
by  the  kitchen  door.  There  was  a  murmur  of  voices,  famil- 
iar yet  unfamiliar:  the  kitchen  door  was  ajar  and  he  peered 
round  stealthily.  There  w^as  Nurse  with  a  very  red  face 
in  a  heap  on  a  chair,  shaking  her  forefinger  at  Mrs.  Frith, 
who  with  an  equally  red  face  was  talking  very  indistinctly 
to  Nurse;  w^hile  between  them,  bolt  upright  and  very  pale, 
sat  Annie  nervously  shaving  from  the  cheese  very  thin  seg- 
ments w^hich  she  ate  from  the  knife's  edge.  They  seemed 
to  Michael,  as  he  watched  them,  like  people  in  a  nightmare, 
so  unreal  and  horrible  were  they :  they  frightened  him  more 
than  ever,  sitting  there  nodding  at  each  other  in  the  kitchen 
where  the  black-beetles  ran  slyly  in  and  out  beneath  the 
fender.  Suddenly  Annie  saw  Michael  and  waved  him  back; 
he  turned  at  her  gesture  and  withdrew  from  sight.  While 
he  stood  shivering  in  the  dark  passage,  Annie  came  out  and, 
picking  him  up,  carried  him  out  of  hearing. 

"Whatever  made  you  come  downstairs?"  she  panted  on 
the  first-floor  landing. 

**I  was  frightened." 

"You  frightened  me!' 

"Who  are  they  murdering?" 

"YouVe  been  having  a  bad  dream,"  said  Annie. 

She  led  him  upstairs  again  to  his  room  and  tucked  him 
up  and  at  his  earnest  request  turned  the  gas  a  trifle  higher. 


44  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"Why  did  Nanny  and  Mrs.  Frith  look  like  that?"  he 
asked. 

"They're  tired,"  said  Annie. 

"Why?" 

"They  have  to  work  so  hard  to  look  after  you." 

Then  she  left  him  alone,  and  he  fell  asleep  before  they 
all  came  up  to  bed. 

Generally  speaking  the  first  part  of  the  night,  however 
bad  the  outside  noises,  was  not  so  fearful  as  the  second  part. 
Mostly  the  second  portion  of  the  night  was  preceded  by  a 
bad  dream  in  which  Michael's  nerves  were  so  much  shaken 
that  he  had  no  courage  or  common  sense  left  to  grapple  w4th 
the  long  hours  in  the  ghastly  stillness  of  his  room.  There 
was  one  dream  in  particular  which  he  dreaded,  and  indeed 
it  was  the  only  one  that  repeated  itself  at  regular  intervals 
without  any  essential  change.  He  would  find  himself  alone 
in  a  long  street  in  the  middle  of  the  night.  Usually  it 
would  be  shining  w^ith  wet,  but  sometimes  it  would  be  dry 
and  airless.  This  street  stretched  as  far  as  one  could  see. 
It  had  on  either  side  lamp-posts  which  burned  w^ith  a  steady 
staring  illumination,  long  rows  of  lamp-posts  that  converged 
in  the  farthest  distance.  The  houses  all  seemed  empty,  yet 
everyone  was  in  some  way  a  malignant  personality.  Down 
this  street  Michael  would  have  to  walk  on  and  on.  He 
would  meet  nobody,  and  the  only  living  thing  was  a  bony 
hound  that  pattered  behind  him  at  whatever  pace  he  went, 
whether  he  ran  or  whether  he  loitered.  He  would  in  his 
dream  be  filled  with  a  desire  to  enter  one  of  these  houses, 
and  often  he  would  mount  the  steps  and  knock  a  summons 
on  the  door — a  knock  that  echoed  all  over  the  gloom  w^ithin. 
While  he  knocked,  the  bony  hound  would  howl  in  the 
shadows  of  the  basement.  Every  house  at  which  he  knocked 
Michael  would  be  more  and  more  anxious  to  pass,  more 
and  more  fearful  to  disturb.  Yet  however  much  he  strug- 
gled against  it,  he  would  ultimately  be  compelled  to  knock 


FEARS    AND    FANTASIES  45 

his  loud  challenge.  The  street  would  now  stretch  for  miles 
of  lighted  lamps  before  and  behind  him,  and  the  knowledge 
would  gradually  be  borne  in  upon  Michael  that  sooner  or 
later  in  one  of  these  gray  houses  the  door  would  open.  He 
would  hurry  along,  but  however  fast  he  travelled,  some 
house  would  draw  him  inexorably  to  its  threshold  and  he 
would  wait  in  agony  lest  slowly  the  great  door  should  swing 
back  to  a  dim  hall.  The  climax  of  the  dream  would  now 
be  reached.  One  house  would  simultaneously  repe)  and 
draw  him  more  than  any  of  those  left  behind.  He  would 
struggle  to  go  by,  but  he  would  find  himself  on  the  steps 
with  legs  that  refused  to  carry  him  away.  He  would  knock : 
very  slowly  the  door  would  swing  back  and,  convulsed  and 
choking  and  warding  off  horror,  Michael  w^ould  wake  in  a 
frenzy  of  fear  to  his  own  real  house  of  ghastly  stillness, 
where  no  longer  did  even  a  belated  luggage-train  or  jingling 
hansom  assure  him  of  life's  continuity. 

He  did  not  always  wake  up  suddenly:  sometimes  he 
would  be  aware  that  he  was  slowly  waking  and  would 
struggle  to  keep  asleep,  lying  for  a  long  time  without  moving 
a  muscle,  in  order  to  cheat  himself  into  the  belief  that  he 
was  not  aw^ake.  But  gradually  the  strain  would  be  too  much 
and  he  would  have  to  become  conscious  of  the  room.  First 
of  all,  he  would  turn  on  to  his  left  side  and  view  apprehen- 
sively the  door  ajar.  This  would  seem  to  tremble,  as  he 
looked,  to  some  invisible  hand  trying  it.  Then  along  the 
wall  the  wardrobe  would  creak,  and  every  knot  of  its  var- 
nished surface  would  take  on  a  fantastic  countenance.  He 
would  wonder  what  was  inside,  and  try  to  gain  comfort 
and  the  sense  of  commonplace  daytime  existence  by  counting 
the  cats  swinging  on  a  roundabout  in  one  of  Louis  Wain's 
Christmas  pictures.  In  the  corner  beyond  the  wardrobe  was 
a  large  clothes-basket  that  crackled  and  snapped  and  must 
surely  hold  somebody  inside,  hidden  as  the  Forty  Thieves 
were  hidden  in  the  oil-jars.     The  fire-place,  opposite  the 


46  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

foot  of  the  bed,  seemed  a  center  for  the  noise  of  mice.  How- 
he  hoped  the)^  would  be  content  to  play  upon  the  hearth  and 
not  venture  to  leap  over  the  fender  and  scuttle  about  the 
room.  Then  the  door  would  begin  to  frighten  him  again, 
and  Michael  w^ould  turn  very  quietly  on  to  his  back,  staring 
at  the  luminous  ceiling  where  the  gas-jet  made  a  huge  moon 
whose  edges  w^avered  perpetually.  But  the  gas-jet  itself 
became  terrifying,  w^hen  looked  at  too  long,  \vith  its  queer 
blue  base  and  slim  solemn  shape,  so  melancholy,  so  desolate, 
so  changeless.  The  ceiling  would  very  soon  become  unen- 
durable because  various  black  marks  would  seem  with  in- 
tensest  contemplation  more  and  more  like  spiders  and  beetles. 
Michael  would  have  to  give  up  lying  on  his  back  and  turn 
upon  his  right  side.  He  would  count  each  slat  of  the 
Venetian  blinds  and  long  passionately  and  sadly  for  the 
gray  streaks  to  appear  at  the  sides  in  proclamation  of  the 
approach  of  day.  Without  these  gray  streaks,  the  windows 
were  unbearable,  so  menacing  were  they  w'ith  the  unknow^n 
infinite  night  behind  them.  The  curtains,  too,  would  quiver, 
and  even  Michael's  clothes,  heaped  upon  a  chair,  w^ould 
assume  a  w^orm-like  vitality.  The  washstand  made  him  feel 
oppressed,  so  silent  and  white  were  the  jug  and  basin  and 
soap-dish,  so  cold  and  chill  were  they.  There  was  nothing 
to  be  done  but  to  bury  his  head  beneath  the  clothes  and, 
trembling,  try  to  believe  in  the  reality  of  guardian  angels. 
He  would  shut  his  eyes  very  tightly  until  the  w^heels  of 
colored  lights  thus  evoked  would  circle  and  revolve,  chang- 
ing their  colors  in  some  mj'sterious  w'ay.  These  dissolving 
spots  w^ere  a  great  consolation  and  passed  the  time  for  a 
little  w^hile,  until  the  dread  of  fire  began  to  come.  He 
w^ould  fling  back  the  clothes  in  a  paroxysm  and,  heedless  of 
any  other  danger,  sit  up  w^th  staring  eyes  and  listening  ears 
and  keen  nostrils,  dreading  and  imagining  and  doubting. 
Surely  he  could  hear  a  crackle ;  he  could  smell  smoke.  The 
house  was  on  fire;   yet  not  for  anything  could  he  have  got 


FEARS    AND    FANTASIES  47 

out  of  bed  to  reassure  himself.  What  might  not  be  under- 
neath, a  burglar,  a  dead  body,  a  murderer,  a  skeleton,  a 
mad  dog? 

Underneath  the  clothes  he  would  plunge,  and  then  he 
would  be  sure  that  someone  was  coming  into  the  room  to 
smother  him.  He  held  his  breath,  waiting,  with  an  effort 
he  flung  back  the  clothes  again.  There  was  nothing  but 
the  ghastly  stillness  and  the  solemn  gaslight  and  the  view- 
less blinds  and  the  expectant  door  ajar.  The  bedposts  would 
now  take  on  a  sort  of  humanity.  They  would  look  at  him 
and  wink  and  shiver.  The  wall-paper,  normally  a  pattern 
of  rosebuds  and  roses,  began  to  move,  to  swim  with  un- 
natural life.  The  cistern  upstairs  began  to  clank;  the  bath 
began  to  drip.  It  must  be  blood — Nanny  had  been  mur- 
dered. The  blood  was  dripping  slowly.  Michael  choked 
with  horror.  Somebody  was  tapping  at  the  window-pane, 
yes,  somebody  was  tapping.  It  was  horrible  this  endless 
tapping.  Cats  must  be  coming  in.  The  wardrobe  creaked 
and  rapped  and  groaned.  Some  of  his  clothes  slid  off  the 
chair  on  to  the  floor  with  a  soft  plump;  Michael  tried  to 
shriek  his  dism.ay;  but  his  tongue  was  dry.  Underneath 
him  a  knife  was  being  pushed  through  the  bed.  A  death- 
w^atch  was  ticking  in  the  fastness  of  the  wall  at  his  head. 
A  rat  was  gnawing  his  way  into  the  room.  Black-beetles 
were  coming  up  the  stairs. 

Then  along  the  edge  of  the  Venetian  blinds  appeared  a 
blue  streak.  It  widened.  It  became  more  luminous.  It 
turned  from  blue  to  gray.  It  turned  from  gray  to  dimmest 
silver.  Hark!  "Cheep,  cheep,  cheep,  cheep!"  The  spar- 
rows were  beginning.  Their  chorus  rose.  Their  noise  was 
cool  as  water  to  Michael's  fever.  An  early  cart  rattled 
cheerfully  down  the  road.     It  was  morning. 


CHAPTER  IV 
UNENDING    CHILDHOOD 

AFTER  whoopfng-cough  came  chicken-pox,  and  it  was 
settled  that  Michael  should  leave  the  Kindergarten 
where  these  illnesses  were  caught.  A  French  gov- 
erness was  to  teach  him  every  morning  and  to  walk  with 
him  every  afternoon.  Mrs.  Fane  wrote  to  Nurse  to  tell 
her  of  this  decision  and  to  announce  that  a  Madame  Flauve 
would  on  Monday  next  arrive  at  64  Carlington  Road  to 
superintend  the  education  of  Michael.  This  news  reached 
Nurse  on  the  preceding  Friday  and  threw  her  into  an  agi- 
tation. The  whole  house  was  turned  upside  down :  curtains 
were  changed;  floors  were  beeswaxed;  furniture  was  pol- 
ished; pictures  were  dusted.  All  Saturday  and  Friday  a 
great  cleaning  took  place,  and  on  Sunday  every  cushion  was 
smoothed  and  patted;  chairs  were  adjusted;  mats  were 
shaken ;  flowers  were  distributed,  until  in  the  evening  Nurse 
and  Cook  and  Annie,  followed  by  Michael,  marched  over 
the  house  and  examined  their  handiwork. 

"Well,  I  hope  we  shall  see  something  worth  looking  at," 
said  Mrs.  Frith.  "I  never  worked  so  hard  in  all  my  nat- 
ural." 

"Oh,  yes.  Must  get  the  place  nice.  Not  going  to  have 
strange  people  come  here  and  grumble,"  said  Nurse. 

"What  is  this  Madame  Flauve?  Is  she  a  lady?"  Cook 
asked. 

"Oh,  yes.  Yes.  A  lady.  French.  Very  particular," 
Nurse  replied. 

48 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  49 

Michael  wondered  what  his  governess  would  be  like.  He 
never  remembered  to  have  seen  Nanny  so  reverently  excited 
before. 

'Tve  heard  a  lot  about  these  French  women,"  said  Mrs. 
Frith.  "A  lot  about  them,  I  have.  They  live  very  gay, 
don't  they?" 

"Doesn't  matter  how  they  live.  No.  No.  Must  have 
everything  at  its  best,"  Nurse  insisted. 

By  the  time  the  scouring  of  the  house  was  done,  Michael 
was  prepared  for  the  advent  of  a  creature  so  lovely  that  he 
made  up  his  mind  the  mere  sight  of  her  would  fill  him  with 
joy.  He  had  not  settled  exactly  w^hich  princess  she  would 
most  nearly  resemble.  As  he  turned  over  the  pages  of  his 
fairy  books,  he  would  fancy  with  every  illustration  that 
here  was  to  be  seen  the  image  of  his  beautiful  French  gov- 
erness. As  he  lay  awake  in  his  bed  on  a  quiet  Sunday  eve- 
ning, so  pleasant  was  the  imagination  of  her  radiancy  that 
fears  and  horrors  were  driven  away  by  the  power  of  her 
beauty's  spell.  The  night  acquired  something  of  the  peace 
and  sanctity  of  Christmas  Eve,  when  the  air  was  hallowed 
by  Santa  Claus  on  his  jovial  pilgrimage.  He  had  never  felt 
so  little  oppressed  by  the  night,  so  confident  in  the  might  of 
good. 

On  Monday  morning  Michael  jigged  through  his  dress- 
ing, jigged  downstairs  to  breakfast,  jigged  through  the  meal 
itself  and  jigged  upstairs  to  the  dining-room  to  watch  for 
the  splendid  arrival.  He  tambourinated  upon  the  window- 
pane  a  gay  little  tune,  jigging  the  while  from  foot  to  foot 
in  an  ecstasy  of  anticipation. 

Nurse  had  decided  that  the  morning-room  was  not  a  fit 
place  for  such  a  paragon  to  perform  her  duties.  Nor  did 
she  feel  that  the  day-nursery  w^as  worthy  of  her.  So,  even 
while  Michael  jigged  at  his  vigil.  Nurse  was  arming  the 
dining-room  table  for  an  encounter  with  greatness.  Inkpots 
were   dusted   and    displayed;     blotting-pads,    including   one 


'50  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

poker-worked  with  a  view  of  Antwerp  Cathedral,  were 
unfolded.  Pens  and  pencils  and  pieces  of  india-rubber  and 
pen-wipers  and  boxes  of  nibs  and  drawing-pins  w^re  lavishly 
scattered  about  the  green  tablecloth.  Various  blue  exercise- 
books  gleamed  in  the  April  sunlight  and,  to  set  the  seal 
upon  the  whole  business,  a  calendar  of  Great  Thoughts  was 
roughly  divested  of  ninety-eight  great  thoughts  at  once,  in 
order  that  for  this  rare  female  a  correct  announcement 
should  celebrate  the  ninth  of  April,  her  famous  date.  At 
five  minutes  to  ten  Nurse  and  Michael  were  both  in  a  state 
of  excitement;  Cook  w^as  saying  that  she  had  never  re- 
gretted the  inadequacy  of  the  kitchen  arrangements  of 
Sixty-four  until  this  moment;  and  Annie  was  bracing  her- 
self for  the  real  effort,  the  opening  of  the  door  to  Madame 
Flauve.  The  only  calm  person  was  Stella  who,  clasping  a 
rubber  doll  with  tight  curly  rubber  hair  and  a  stomachic 
squeak,  chanted  to  herself  the  saga  of  Madame  Flauve's 
arrival. 

At  two  minutes  past  ten,  Michael  said  somebody  was 
coming  up  the  steps,  and  a  ring  confirmed  his  assertion. 
The  door  was  opened.  Madame  Flauve  was  heard  rubbing 
her  boots  on  the  salve  of  the  mat,  w^as  heard  putting  away 
her  umbrella  in  the  peacock-blue  china  umbrella-stand,  was 
heard  inquiring  for  Mrs.  Fane  and  was  announced  inaudibly 
by  Annie. 

Michael's  heart  sank  when  he  beheld  a  fat  young  French- 
woman with  a  bilious  complexion  and  little  pigs'  eyes  and  a 
dowdy  black  mantle  and  a  common  black  hat.  As  for 
Nurse,  she  sniffed  quite  audibly  and  muttered  an  insincere 
hope  that  Madame  Flauve  would  find  everything  to  her 
liking.  The  governess  answered  in  the  thick  voice  of  one 
who  is  always  swallowing  jujubes  that  without  a  doubt  she 
would  find  everything,  and  presently  Nurse  left  the  room 
with  many  a  backward  glance  of  contempt  towards  Madame 
Flauve. 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD 


51 


Monday 


Tuesday 


Wednesday-!  n — 12 

1 12 — I 
10 — II 


Thursday 


Friday 


2.30 — 4    Walk 


2.30 — 4    Walk 


2.30 — 4     Walk 


2.30 — 4     Walk 


2.30—4 


Walk 


When  the  lessons  began  (or  rather  before  they  began)  a 
time-table  was  drawn  up  by  Madame  Flauve: 

French 

Geography 

History 

Geography 

History 

French 

History 

Geography 

French 

French 

History 

Geography 

Geography 

French 

History 

Michael,  when  he  saw  the  programme  of  his  work,  felt 
much  depressed.  It  seemed  to  lack  variety,  and  he  was  not 
very  much  cheered  up  to  hear  that  at  meals  only  French 
would  be  spoken.  Those  meals  were  dreadful.  At  first 
Nurse  and  Stella  were  present,  but  when  Nanny  found  that 
Madame  wanted  to  teach  Stella  the  French  for  knife  and 
fork,  she  declined  to  have  dinner  downstairs  any  longer, 
and  Michael  and  Madame  Flauve  were  left  to  dine  tete-a- 
tete  on  dull  food  and  a  languishing  conversation. 

"Madam  indeed,"  Nurse  would  snifi,  when  the  governess 
had  left  after  tea,  "I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing  in  all  my 
life.    Madam!    A  fine  Madam!" 

"What  an  imperence,"  agreed  Mrs.  Frith.  "Fancy,  a 
ordinary  volgar  thing  like  that  to  go  calling  herself  Madam, 
whatever  shall  we  come  to?" 

"It  does  seem  a  cheek,  don't  it?"  said  Annie. 

"I  never!"  Cook  gasped.     "I  never!     Madam!    Well,  I 


52  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

could  almost  laugh  at  the  sauce  of  it.  And  all  that  cleaning 
as  you  might  say  for  a  person  as  isn't  a  scrap  better  than 
you  and  me." 

"Oh,  I've  written  to  Mrs.  Fane,"  said  Nurse.  "I  said 
there  must  be  some  mistake  been  made.  Oh,  yes,  a  mistake 
— must  be  a  mistake." 

Michael  did  not  much  enjoy  the  walks  w^ith  his  governess. 
He  was  always  taken  to  a  second-hand  furniture-shop  in 
the  Hammersmith  Road,  not  a  pleasant  old  furniture-shop 
with  Toby  mugs  and  stuffed  birds  and  coins;  but  a  barrack 
full  of  red  washing-stands  and  white-handled  chests  of 
drawers.  Madame  Flauve  informed  him  that  she  w^as  en- 
gaged in  furnishing  at  that  moment,  and  would  immediately 
show  him  a  locket  with  the  portrait  of  her  husband  inset. 
Michael  could  not  gain  any  clear  idea  of  what  M.  Flauve 
was  like,  since  all  that  remained  was  a  nebulous  profile 
smothered  by  a  very  black  moustache.  Madame  Flauve 
told  him  that  M.  Flauve  was  "tout-a-fait  charmant,  mais 
charmant,  mon  petit.  II  etait  si  aimable,  si  gentil  et  d'un 
cceur  tres,  tres  bon."  Michael  grew  very  tired  of  being 
jostled  outside  the  furniture-shop  every  afternoon,  while  his 
governess  grubbed  around  the  ugly  furniture  and  argued 
with  the  man  about  the  prices.  The  only  article  she  ever 
bought  was  a  commode,  which  so  violently  embarrassed 
Michael  that  he  blushed  the  whole  way  home.  But 
Madame  Flauve  often  made  him  blush  and  would  comment 
upon  subjects  not  generally  mentioned  except  by  Mrs.  Frith, 
and  even  by  her  only  in  a  spirit  of  hearty  coarseness  that  did 
not  make  Michael  feel  ashamed  like  this  Frenchwoman's 
suggestion  of  the  nasty.  He  was  on  one  occasion  very  much 
disgusted  by  her  remarks  on  the  inside  of  an  egg  that  was 
slightly  set.  Yet  while  he  was  disgusted,  his  curiosity  was 
stimulated  by  the  information  imparted,  and  he  made  further 
inquiries  from  Nurse  that  evening.  Nanny  was  horrified, 
and  said  plainly  that  she  considered  this  governess  no  better 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  53 


than  a  low  beast,  and  that  she  should  write  accordingly  to 
Mrs.  Fane. 

After  a  month  or  two,  Michael  was  sent  back  to  school 
in  the  morning,  though  the  afternoon  walks  still  continued 
for  a  time.  When  Michael  returned  to  the  Misses  Marrow, 
he  was  promoted  to  the  class  above  the  Kindergarten  and 
was  set  to  learn  the  elements  of  Latin  in  a  desultory  and 
unpractical  way,  that  is  to  say  he  was  made  to  learn — 

Nominative,  mensa,  a  table 
Vocative,  mensa,  O  table 
Accusative,  mensam,  a  table 

and  the  rest  of  the  unintelligible  rigmarole.  He  had  no 
clear  notion  what  Latin  was,  and  so  far  as  he  could  make 
out  nobody  else  at  the  Misses  Marrow's  school  had  any 
clearer  notion.  Indeed,  the  only  distinct  addition  to  his 
knowledge  of  life  was  gained  from  Vernon  Brown  who, 
with  great  ingenuity,  had  hollowed  out  a  cork  and  by  the 
insertion  of  several  pins  in  the  front  had  made  of  it  a  minia- 
ture cage  in  which  he  kept  a  fly.  All  the  other  boys  w^ere 
much  impressed  by  Vernon  Brown's  achievement,  and  very 
soon  they  all  came  to  school  with  flies  captive  in  excavated 
corks.  Michael  longed  to  be  like  these  bigger  boys  and 
pined  for  a  cage.  One  day  Edward  Arnott  gave  him  one, 
and  all  the  rest  of  that  day  Michael  watched  the  fly  trying 
to  escape.  When  he  showed  it  to  Madame  Flauve,  she  pro- 
fessed herself  shocked  by  the  cruelty  of  it  and  begged  him 
to  release  the  fly,  asserting  that  she  would  find  him  a  sub- 
stitute which  would  deceive  all  the  other  boys.  Michael 
agreed  to  release  his  captive  and  the  long-imprisoned  fly 
walked  painfully  out  of  his  cell.  Then  Madame  Flauve 
chipped  off  a  little  piece  of  coal  and  tied  it  round  w^ith  one 
of  her  own  hairs  and  showed  Michael  how  by  cunningly 
twisting  this  hair,  the  coal  would  gain  the  appearance  of 


'54  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

mobility.  Michael  was  doubtful  at  first,  but  Madame's 
exaggerated  encouragement  led  him  to  suppose  that  it  was 
safe  to  practise  the  deception  on  his  companions.  So  on  the 
next  day  he  proceeded  to  exhibit  his  "fly."  But  everybody 
knew  it  was  coal  and  jeered  at  Michael  and  made  him  very 
unhappy  and  anxious  never  again  to  attempt  to  differentiate 
himself  or  his  actions  from  the  rest  of  mankind. 

Michael's  mother  came  home  towards  the  end  of  July, 
and  Madame  Flauve  vanished  to  her  husband  and  house 
and  furniture.  Michael  did  not  regret  her.  Mrs.  Fane 
asked  him  many  questions  and  particularly  she  wanted  to 
know  if  he  was  perfectly  happy.  Michael  said  ''yes,"  and 
his  mother  seemed  satisfied.  She  was  now  very  much  taken 
up  with  Stella,  who  was  a  lovely  little  girl  with  gray  eyes 
and  light  brown  glinting  hair.  Michael  did  not  exactly 
feel  jealous  of  his  sister,  but  he  had  an  emotion  of  disap- 
pointment that  no  longer  could  he  be  alone  with  his  mother 
in  a  fragrant  intimacy  from  which  the  perpetually  sleeping 
Stella  was  excluded.  Now  Stella  no  longer  slept  all  the 
time,  but,  on  the  contrary,  was  very  much  awake  and  very 
eager  to  be  entertained.  Michael  also  felt  a  twinge  of 
regret  that  Stella  should  be  able  out  of  her  own  self  to 
entertain  grown-up  people.  He  wished  that  he  could  com- 
pose these  wonderful,  endless  songs  of  hers.  He  could  not 
but  admit  that  they  were  wonderful,  and  exactly  like  real 
poetry.  To  be  sure  their  subjects  w^re  ordinary  enough. 
There  was  no  magic  in  them.  Stella  would  simply  sing  of 
getting  up  in  the  morning  and  of  the  morning  bath  and  the 
towel  and  the  bread  and  milk  for  breakfast.  She  would 
sing,  too,  of  the  ride  in  the  perambulator  and  of  the  ladies 
who  paid  her  compliments  as  she  passed.  It  was  a  little 
galling  to  Michael  that  he,  so  long  his  mother's  only  com- 
panion, should  have  to  share  her  love  with  such  an  insidious 
rival.  Curious  men  with  long  hair  came  to  the  house,  ap- 
parently just  to  see  Stella;    for  they  took  no  notice  at  all 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  55, 

of  Michael.  These  long-haired  visitors  would  sit  round  in 
the  drawing-room,  while  Stella  played  at  the  piano  pieces 
that  were  not  half  so  hummable  as  those  which  Michael  had 
already  learned  to  play  in  violent  allegretto.  Stella  would 
sit  upright  in  her  starchiest  frock  and  widest  sash  and  play 
without  any  music  a  long  and  boring  noise  that  made 
Michael  feel  very  fidgety.  He  would  endure  it  for  a  while 
and  then  he  would  have  to  go  out  of  the  room.  The  first 
time  he  had  done  this,  he  had  expected  somehow  that  people 
would  run  after  him  to  bring  him  back.  But  nobody  moved. 
Everyone  was  intent  upon  Stella  and  her  noise.  They  were 
all  grunting  and  clearing  their  throats  and  making  unin- 
telligible exclamations.  Michael  was  glad  that  they  had 
begun  to  build  houses  in  the  waste  ground  opposite.  It  was 
better  to  watch  men  climbing  up  ladders  and  walking  over 
planks  and  messing  with  lumps  of  mortar  than  to  sit  there 
among  those  guttural  men  in  an  atmosphere  of  Stella  wor- 
ship. He  felt  sometimes  that  he  would  like  to  pinch  Stella's 
legs — they  looked  so  sleek  and  well-behaved,  as  she  sat  there 
playing  the  piano.  Michael  w^as  never  invited  to  play  on 
the  drawing-room  piano.  He  was  only  allowed  to  play  up 
in  the  day-nursery  with  merely  the  ambition  of  one  day 
being  able  to  reach  the  pedals  to  stir  him  on. 

"Ach,  Mrs.  Vane,"  he  heard  these  long-haired  men  de- 
clare. "Your  daughter  is  wonderful.  Ach!  Ach!  Ach! 
She  is  a  genius.  She  will  be  the  great  bianist  of  the  new 
generation.    Ach!    Ach!    Ach!" 

Michael  began  to  feel  that  his  love  for  his  mother  or  her 
love  for  him  did  not  matter.  He  began  to  feel  that  only 
what  he  himself  thought  and  wanted  did  matter ;  and  when 
she  went  away  again,  he  was  sorry,  but  not  so  sorry  as  he 
used  to  be.  One  of  these  long-haired  men  now  began  to 
come  every  day  to  give  Stella  lessons  on  the  drawing-room 
piano.  He  would  give  a  very  loud  knock  and  hang  up  a 
wide-brimmed  black  hat  in  the  hall  and  clear  his  throat  and 


S6  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

button  up  his  coat  very  tightly  and  march  into  the  drawing- 
room  to  wait  for  Stella  to  be  brought  down.  Stella  would 
come  down  the  stairs  with  her  gray  eyes  shining  and  her 
hair  all  fuzzy  and  her  hands  smelling  of  pink  soap,  while 
Nurse  would  blow  very  importantly  and  tell  Michael  not 
to  peep  round  corners.  Stella's  music  lessons  were  much 
grander  than  Michael's  in  the  stuffy  back-room  of  Miss 
Marrow's.  Besides,  Michael's  music  lessons  were  now  par- 
ticularly unpleasant,  because  Miss  Hunt,  his  mistress,  had 
grown  two  warts  on  her  first  finger  during  the  summer 
holidays,  which  made  him  feel  sick  during  their  eternal 
duets. 

The  withdrawal  of  Madame  Flauve  from  the  superin- 
tendence of  Michael's  afternoon  walks  was  apparently  a 
great  blow  to  Nurse.  She  had  acquired  a  habit  either  of 
retiring  to  the  night-nursery  or  of  popping  out  of  the  back- 
door on  secret  errands.  Stella,  in  the  charge  of  Annie,  was 
perfectly  happy  upstairs,  and  Nurse  resented  very  strongly 
Michael's  inquiries  as  to  where  she  was  going.  Michael 
had  no  ulterior  reasons  for  his  questions.  He  was  sincerely 
interested  by  these  afternoon  walks  of  Nurse,  and  specu- 
lated often  upon  her  destination.  She  would  always  return 
very  cheerful  and  would  often  bring  him  home  small  pres- 
ents— a  dark-blue  bird  on  a  pin  at  boat-race  time  (for 
Nurse  was  staunchly  Oxford),  a  penny  packet  of  stamps 
most  of  which  were  duplicates  inside,  penny  illustrated 
books  of  Cock  Robin  or  Tom  Thumb ;  and  once  she  brought 
him  home  a  Night  Companion.  This  Night  Companion 
was  a  club-headed  stick,  very  powerful  and  warranted  to 
secure  the  owner  from  a  murderous  attack.  It  was  one  of 
a  row  in  the  window  of  a  neighboring  umbrella-shop,  a 
long  row  of  Night  Companions  that  cost  one  shilling  each. 
Michael  liked  his  stick  and  took  it  to  bed  with  him  and 
was  comforted,  when  he  woke  up,  by  the  sight  of  its  knotted 
head  upon  the  bolster.     He  grew  very  intimate  with  the 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  57 


stick  and  endowed  it  with  character  and  temperament  and 
humanity.  He  would  often  stare  at  the  still  unpurchased 
Night  Companions  in  the  shop,  trying  to  discover  if  any 
other  of  them  were  so  beneficent  and  so  pleasant  a  com- 
panion as  his  own.  In  time  he  took  a  fancy  to  another, 
and  begged  Nurse  to  be  allowed  to  buy  this  for  Stella. 
Nurse  was  gratified  by  his  appreciation  of  her  present  and 
gave  him  leave  to  break  into  the  ten-shilling  piece  to  endow 
Stella  with  a  companion.  Michael  himself  carried  it  home, 
wrapped  in  a  flimsy  brown  paper  and  tied  up  as  he  thought 
unnecessarily  with  a  flimsy  string.  Stella  was  told  to  take 
it  to  bed  with  her  and  did  so,  but  by  some  accident  grazed 
her  forehead  on  the  Night  Companion's  knotty  head  and 
cried  so  much  that  it  was  taken  away  from  her.  This  was 
all  the  better  for  Michael  who  thenceforth  had  two  Night 
Companions— one  on  either  side  of  him  to  guard  him  from 
the  door  and  the  window. 

Still,  notwithstanding  these  presents,  Nurse  grew  more 
and  more  irritable  to  find  Michael  watching  her  exits  from 
and  entrances  into  64  Carlington  Road.  Once,  she  was  so 
much  annoyed  to  see  Michael's  face  pressed  against  the  pane 
of  the  morning-room  window  that  she  slid  all  the  way  down 
the  area-steps  and  sent  Michael  to  bed  as  a  punishment  for 
peeping.  At  last  she  decided  that  Michael  must  go  for 
walks  by  himself  and,  lest  he  should  be  lost  or  get  into 
mischief,  every  walk  must  be  in  the  same  direction,  along 
the  same  road  to  the  same  place  and  back.  He  was  to  walk 
up  Carlington  Road  into  the  Hammersmith  Road  and  along 
the  Kensington  Road  as  far  as  the  Earl's  Court  Road. 
Here  he  was  to  stop  and  turn  round  and  walk  back  to 
Carlington  Road  on  his  traces. 

Michael  detested  this  walk.     He  would  stump  up  the 

area-steps,  watched  by  Nurse,  and  he  would  walk  steadily, 

looking  neither  to  the  right  nor  to  the  left  according  to 

orders,  as  far  as  44  Carlington  Road.     Here  in  the  morn- 

5 


58  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

ing-room  window  was  a  small  aquarium,  sadly  mobile  with 
half  a  dozen  pale  goldfish,  that  Michael  would  be  compelled 
to  watch  for  a  few  seconds  before  he  turned  round  and 
acknowledged  the  fact  that  Nurse  was  flicking  him  on  with 
her  hand.  Michael  would  proceed  past  the  other  houses 
until  he  came  to  22  Carlington  Road,  where  a  break  oc- 
curred, caused  by  a  house  entirely  different  from  any  of  the 
others,  at  the  side  of  which  was  a  huge  double  door.  This 
was  sometimes  open,  and  inside  could  be  seen  men  hammer- 
ing with  chisels  at  enormous  statues  including  representa- 
tions of  Queen  Victoria  and  of  a  benignant  lion.  Next  to 
this  house  was  a  post  office,  not  an  ordinary  post  office 
where  stamps  could  be  bought,  but  a  harum-scarum  place, 
full  of  postmen  running  up  and  down  and  emptying  bags 
and  hammering  on  letters  and  talking  very  loudly  and  very 
quickly.  By  this  office  Carlington  Road  made  an  abrupt 
rectangular  turn  past  a  tumble-down  tarred  fence,  through 
whose  interstices  could  be  seen  a  shadowy  garden  full  of 
very  long  pale  grass  and  of  trees  with  jet-black  trunks. 
Beyond  the  trees  was  a  tumble-down  house  with  big  bare 
windows  glinting  amongst  the  ivy.  After  this  Carlington 
Road  went  on  again  with  smaller  houses  of  a  deeper  red 
brick  than  those  in  the  part  where  Michael  lived.  They 
had  no  basements,  and  one  could  see  into  their  dining-rooms, 
so  close  were  they  to  the  road.  When  2  Carlington  Road 
was  reached,  a  tall  advertisement  hoarding  began,  and  for  a 
hundred  yards  the  walk  became  absolutely  interesting. 
Then  Carlington  Mansions  rose  majestic,  and  Michael,  who 
had  been  told  that  they  were  flats  and  had  heard  people 
wondering  at  this  strange  new  method  of  existence,  loitered 
for  a  moment  in  order  to  watch  a  man  in  a  uniform,  sitting 
on  a  wooden  chair  and  reading  a  pink  newspaper.  He  also 
read  the  names  of  people  who  were  either  out  or  in,  and 
settled,  when  he  was  older,  to  live  in  a  flat  in  the  security 
of  many  other  families  and  a  man  in  a  green  uniform.    The 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  59 


roar  of  the  Hammersmith  Road  burst  upon  him,  and  dreams 
were  over  for  a  while,  as  he  hurried  along  past  eight  shops, 
at  none  of  which  he  would  dare  to  look  since  he  read  in  a 
book  of  a  boy  who  had  been  taken  off  to  the  police  station 
on  a  charge  of  theft,  though  he  was  actually  as  innocent  as 
Michael  himself,  and  was  merely  interested  by  the  contents 
of  a  shop  window.  The  next  turning  to  Carlington  Road 
was  a  queer  terrace,  very  quiet  except  that  it  overlooked 
the  railway,  very  quiet  and  melancholy  and  somehow  wicked. 
Nothing  ever  turned  down  here  except  an  occasional  dog  or 
cat;  no  servants  stood  gossiping  by  area-gates,  and  at  the 
end  of  it  loomed  the  tumble-down  house,  whose  garden 
Michael  had  already  seen  near  the  post  office.  He  used  to 
think  as  he  left  Padua  Terrace  behind  him  that  one  day  for 
a  great  adventure  he  would  like  to  walk  along  under  its 
elm-trees  to  discover  if  anyone  did  live  in  those  dark  houses ; 
but  he  never  managed  to  be  brave  enough  to  do  so.  Michael 
now  crossed  the  railway  bridge  and  looked  at  the  advertise- 
ments: then  followed  a  dull  line  of  iron  railings  with  rusty 
pine-apples  on  top  of  each  of  them.  These  were  bounded 
at  each  end  by  gates  that  were  marked  "Private.  No  Thor- 
oughfare," and  after  the  second  gate  came  the  first  crossing. 
Michael  had  been  told  to  be  very  careful  of  crossings,  and 
he  used  to  poise  himself  on  the  curb  for  a  moment  to  see 
if  any  carts  were  near.  If  none  were  even  in  sight,  he  used 
to  run  across  as  quickly  as  he  could.  There  were  three 
other  crossings  before  Earl's  Court  Road  was  reached,  and 
one  of  them  was  so  wide  that  he  was  very  glad  indeed  when 
it  was  put  behind  him.  All  the  way,  terrace  after  terrace 
of  grim  houses  set  back  from  the  high  road  behind  shrub- 
beries, had  to  be  passed,  and  all  the  way  Michael  used  to 
hum  to  himself  for  company  and  diversion  and  encourage- 
ment. The  only  interesting  event  was  a  pavement-artist, 
and  he  was  very  often  not  there.     It  was  an  exasperating 


6o  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

and  monotonous  walk,   and  he  hated   it  for  the  gloom  it 
shed  upon  all  his  afternoons. 

Sometimes  Michael  would  arrive  home  before  Nanny, 
and  then  he  would  have  to  endure  a  long  cross-examination 
upon  his  route.  The  walk  was  not  sufficiently  interesting 
to  invent  tales  about,  and  he  resented  Nurse's  incredulous 
attitude  and  wrinkled  obstinate  face.  Indeed,  Michael  be- 
gan to  resent  Nurse  altogether,  and  so  far  as  he  was  able 
he  avoided  her.  His  scheme  of  things  was  logical:  he  had 
already  a  philosophy,  and  his  conception  of  the  wonder 
inherent  in  everything  was  evidently  not  unique,  because 
the  pictures  in  Don  Quixote  proved  conclusively  that  what 
Michael  thought,  other  people  besides  himself  thought.  He 
might  be  old-fashioned,  as  Nurse  assured  him  he  was;  but 
if  to  be  old-fashioned  was  to  live  in  the  world  of  Don 
Quixote,  he  certainly  preferred  it  to  the  world  in  which 
Nanny  lived.  That  seemed  to  him  a  circumscribed  and 
close  existence  for  which  he  had  no  sympathy.  It  was  a 
world  of  poking  about  in  medicine-cupboards,  of  blind  un- 
reasonableness, of  stupidity  and  malice  and  blank  ugliness. 
He  would  sit  watching  Nanny  nibbling  with  her  front  teeth 
the  capers  of  the  caper  sauce,  and  he  would  hate  her.  She 
interfered  with  him,  with  his  day-dreams  and  toys  and 
meals ;  and  the  only  time  when  he  wanted  her  presence  was 
in  the  middle  of  the  night,  when  she  was  either  drinking 
her  glass  of  ale  in  the  kitchen  or  snoring  heavily  in  the  next 
room.  Michael's  only  ambition  was  to  live  in  his  own 
world.  This  he  would  have  shared  with  his  mother,  but 
her  visits  were  now  so  rare  that  it  was  unwise  to  rely  on 
her  presence  for  happiness.  He  was  learning  to  do  without 
her :  Nurse  he  had  never  yet  learnt  to  endure.  She  charged 
ferociously  into  his  fancies,  shattering  them  with  her  fussy 
interference,  just  as  she  would  snatch  away  his  clay  pipe, 
when  the  most  perfect  bubble  was  trembling  on  the  edge  of 
the  bowl. 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  6i 

"Time  for  tea,"  she  would  mutter.  "Time  for  bed,"  she 
would  chatter.  Always  it  was  time  for  something  un- 
pleasant. 

Mrs.  Frith,  on  the  other  hand,  was  a  person  whose 
attractions  grew  with  longer  friendship,  as  Nurse's  decreased 
even  from  the  small  quantity  she  originally  possessed.  As 
Michael  month  by  month  grew  older,  Mrs.  Frith  expanded 
towards  him.  She  found  him  an  attentive,  even  a  breath- 
less listener  to  her  rollicking  tales.  Her  life  Michael  plainly 
perceived  to  have  been  crammed  with  exciting  adventures. 
In  earliest  youth  she  had  been  forced  by  cunning  to  outwit 
a  brutal  father  with  the  frightening  habit  of  coming  home 
in  the  evening  and  taking  off  his  belt  to  her  and  her  brothers 
and  her  sisters.  The  house  in  which  she  lived  had  been  full 
of  hiding-places,  and  Mrs.  Frith,  picturing  herself  to 
Michael  of  less  ample  girth,  described  wonderfully  how  her 
father  had  actually  routed  for  her  with  a  broom-handle 
while  her  mother  sat  weeping  into  an  apron.  Then  it  ap- 
peared that  it  was  the  custom  of  small  boys  in  the  street 
of  her  youth  to  sell  liquorice-water  in  exchange  for  pins. 

"But  was  it  nice?"  asked  Michael,  remembering  liquorice- 
powder. 

"Lovely  stuff,"  Mrs.  Frith  affirmed.  "They  used  to  go 
calling  up  and  down.  Tine  liquorice-water !  Fine  liquorice- 
water!  Bring  out  your  pins  and  have  a  bottle  of  liquorice- 
water.'  " 

**And  did  you?"  asked  Michael. 

"Did  we?  Of  course  we  did — every  pin  in  the  place. 
There  wasn't  a  pin  in  the  whole  street  after  those  boys  had 
gone  by." 

"What  else  did  you  do  when  you  were  little,  Mrs. 
Frith?" 

"What  else?    Why  everything." 

"Yes,  but  tell  me  what,"  Michael  begged,  clasping  his 
knees  and  looking  earnestly  at  Cook. 


62  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER  

"Why  once  I  went  to  a  Sunday-school  treat  and  got 
thrown  off  of  a  donkey  and  showed  more  than  I  meant,  and 
the  boys  all  hollered  after  me  going  to  Sunday-school  and  I 
used  to  stand  behind  a  corner  and  dodge  them.  The  saucy 
demons!" 

These  tales  were  endless,  and  Michael  thought  how  jolly 
it  would  be  to  set  out  early  one  summer  morning  with  Mrs. 
Frith  and  look  for  adventures  like  Don  Quixote.  This 
became  a  favorite  day-dream,  and  he  used  to  fancy  Mrs, 
Frith  tossed  in  a  blanket  like  Sancho  Panza.  What  com- 
pany she  would  be,  and  it  would  be  possible  with  two  don- 
keys. He  had  seen  women  as  fat  as  her  riding  on  donkeys 
by  the  seaside. 

One  day  Mrs.  Frith  told  him  she  was  thinking  of  getting 
married  again,  and  on  a  Sunday  afternoon  Michael  was 
introduced  to  her  future  husband,  a  certain  Mr.  Hopkins 
who  had  a  shining  red  head  and  an  enormous  colored 
handkerchief  into  which  he  trumpeted  continuously.  Mr. 
Hopkins  also  had  a  daughter  three  or  four  years  older  than 
Michael — a  wizened  little  girl  called  Flossie  who  spoke  in 
a  sort  of  hiss  and  wore  very  conspicuous  underclothing  of 
red  flannelette.  Michael  and  Flossie  played  together  shyly 
under  the  admiring  patronage  of  Mrs.  Frith  and  Mr.  Hop- 
kins, and  were  just  beginning  to  be  friendly  when  Nurse 
came  in  and  said: 

"Can't  be  allowed.  No,  no.  Never  heard  of  such  a 
thing.     Tut-tut." 

After  this  Nurse  and  Mrs.  Frith  did  not  seem  to  get  on 
very  well,  and  Mrs.  Frith  used  to  talk  about  "people  as 
gave  theirselves  airs  which  they  had  no  business  to  of  done." 
She  was  kinder  than  ever  to  Michael  and  gave  him  as  many 
sultanas  as  he  wanted  and  told  him  all  about  the  house  into 
w^hich  she  and  Mr.  Hopkins  and  Flossie  would  presently 
depart  from  Carlington  Road. 

"Are  you  going  away?"  Michael  asked  aghast. 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  63 


"Going  to  be  married,"  said  Mrs.  Frith. 

''But  I  don't  want  you  to  go." 

"There,  bless  your  heart.  I've  a  good  mind  to  stay.  I 
believe  you'll  miss  your  poor  old  Mrs.   Frith,  eh,  ducky?'* 

Everybody  nice  w^ent  away,  Michael  thought.  It  was 
extraordinary  how  only  nasty  food  and  nasty  people  were 
wholesome. 

Mrs.  Frith's  departure  was  even  more  exciting  than  her 
stories.  One  afternoon  Michael  found  her  in  the  kitchen, 
dancing  about  with  her  skirts  kilted  above  her  knees.  He 
was  a  little  embarrassed  at  first,  but  very  soon  he  had  to 
laugh  because  she  was  evidently  not  behaving  like  this  in 
order  to  show  off,  but  because  she  enjoyed  dancing  about 
the  kitchen. 

"Why  are  you  dancing,  Mrs.  Frith?"  he  asked. 

"Happy  as  a  lark,  lovey,"  she  answered  in  an  odd  voice. 
"Happy  as  a  lark,  for  w^e  won't  go  home  till  morning,  we 
won't  go  home  till  morning,"  and  singing,  she  twirled  round 
and  round  until  she  sank  into  a  wicker  arm-chair.  At  this 
moment  Annie  came  running  downstairs  with  Nurse,  and 
both  of  them  glared  at  Mrs.  Frith  with  shocked  expressions. 

"What  ever  are  you  doing,  Cook?"  said  Nurse. 

"That's  all  right,  lovey.  That's  All  Sir  Garnet,  and 
don't  you  make  no  mistake.     Don't  you — make  no  mistake." 

Here  Mrs.  Frith  gave  a  very  loud  hiccup  and  waved  her 
arms  and  did  not  even  say  "beg  pardon"  for  the  offensive 
noise. 

"Michael,"  said  Nurse,  "go  upstairs  at  once.  Mrs.  Frith, 
get  up.    You  ignorant  and  vulgar  woman.     Get  up." 

"And  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of  yourself,"  said  Cook 
to  Nurse.  "You  old  performing  monkey,  that's  what  you 
are." 

"Annie,"  said  Nurse,  "fetch  a  policeman  in,  and  go  and 
get  this  woman's  box." 

"Woman!"  said  Mrs.  Frith.     "Woman  yourself.    Who's 


64  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

a  woman?  I'm  not  a  woman.  No,  I'm  not.  And  if  I  am 
a  woman,  you're  not  the  one  to  say  so.  Ah,  I  know  how 
many  bottles  have  gone  out  of  this  house  and  come  in — not 
by  me." 

"Hold  your  impudent  tongue,"  said  Nurse. 

"I  shall  not  hold  my  tongue,  so  now,"  retorted  Mrs. 
Frith. 

Michael  had  squeezed  himself  behind  the  kitchen  door 
fascinated  by  this  duel.  It  was  like  Alice  in  Wonderland, 
and  every  minute  he  expected  to  see  Cook  throwing  plates 
at  Nanny,  who  was  certainly  making  faces  exactly  like  the 
Duchess.  The  area  door  slammed,  and  Michael  wondered 
what  was  going  to  happen.  Presently  there  came  the  sound 
of  a  deep  tread  in  the  passage  and  a  policeman  entered. 

"What's  all  this?"  he  said  in  a  deep  voice. 

"Constable,"  said  Nurse,  "will  you  please  remove  this 
dreadful  woman." 

"What's  she  been  doing?"  asked  the  policeman. 

"She's  drunk." 

Mrs.  Frith,  apparently  overwhelmed  by  the  enormity  of 
the  accusation,  tottered  to  her  feet  and  seized  a  saucepan. 

"None  of  that  now,"  said  the  policeman  roughly,  as  he 
caught  her  by  the  waist. 

"Oh,  I'm  not  afraid  of  a  bluebottle,"  said  Mrs.  Frith 
haughtily.     "Not  of  a  bluebottle,  I'm  not." 

"Are  you  going  to  charge  her?"  the  policeman  asked. 

"No,  no.  Nothing  but  turn  her  out.  The  girl's  packing 
her  box.    Give  her  the  box  and  let  her  go." 

"Not  without  my  wages,"  said  Mrs.  Frith.  "I'm  not 
going  to  leave  my  wages  behind.     Certainly  I'm  not." 

Nurse  fumbled  in  her  purse,  and  at  last  produced  some 
money. 

"That's  the  easiest  way,"  said  the  policeman.  "Pay  her 
the  month  and  let  her  go.     Come  on,  my  lady." 

He  seized  Mrs.  Frith  and  began  to  walk  her  to  the  door 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  65 

as  if  she  were  a  heavy  sack.  Michael  began  to  cry.  He  did 
not  want  Mrs.  Frith  to  be  hurt  and  he  felt  frightened.  In 
the  passage,  she  suddenly  broke  loose  and,  turning  round, 
pushed  Nurse  into  the  laundry  basket,  and  was  so  pleased 
with  her  successful  effort  that  she  almost  ran  out  of  the 
house  and  could  presently  be  heard  singing  very  cheerfully 
"White  wings,  they  never  grow  weary,"  to  the  policeman. 
In  the  end  her  trunk  was  pushed  down  the  front-door  steps, 
and  after  more  singing  and  arguing  a  four-wheeler  arrived 
and  Mrs.  Frith  vanished  forever  from  Carlington  Road. 

The  effect  of  this  scene  on  Nurse  was  to  make  her  more 
repressive  and  secretive.  She  was  also  very  severe  on  vul- 
garity ;  and  all  sorts  of  old  words  were  wrapped  up  in  new 
words,  as  when  bread  and  dripping  became  bread  and  honey, 
because  dripping  was  vulgar.  The  house  grew  much  gloom- 
ier with  Mrs.  Frith's  departure.  The  new  cook,  whose 
name  Michael  never  found  out,  because  she  remained  the 
impersonal  official,  was  very  brusque  and  used  to  say: 

"Now  then,  young  man,  out  of  my  kitchen  or  I'll  tell 
Nurse.  And  don't  hang  about  in  the  passage  or  in  two-twos 
you'll  be  sorry  you  ever  came  downstairs." 

It  was  autumn  again,  and  the  warmth  was  dreary  and 
wet.  Michael  suffered  a  severe  shock  one  morning.  It  was 
too  foggy  to  go  to  school,  and  he  was  sitting  alone  in  the 
window  of  the  morning-room,  staring  at  the  impenetrable 
and  fearful  yellowness  of  the  air.  Suddenly  he  heard  the 
cry,  "Remember,  remember  the  Fifth  of  November,  and 
gunpowder,  treason  and  plot,"  and,  almost  before  he  had 
time  to  realize  it  was  the  dreaded  Guy  Fawkes,  a  band  of 
loud-voiced  boys  with  blackened  faces  came  surging  down 
the  area  steps  and  held  close  to  the  window  a  nodding  Guy. 
Michael  shrieked  with  fear  and  ran  from  the  room,  only 
to  be  told  by  Nurse  that  she'd  never  heard  such  old-fash- 
ioned nonsense  in  all  her  life. 

During  that  November  the  fogs  were  very  bad  and,  as 


66  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

an  epidemic  term  had  compelled  the  Misses  Marrow  to 
close  their  school,  Michael  brooded  at  home  in  the  gaslit 
rooms  that  shone  dully  in  the  streets  of  footsteps.  The  long 
morning  would  drag  its  length  out,  and  dinner  would  find 
no  appetite  in  Michael.  Stella  seemed  not  to  care  to  play 
and  would  mope  with  round  eyes  saddened  by  this  eternal 
gloom.  Dusk  was  merely  marked  by  the  drawing  down  of 
the  blinds  at  the  clock's  hour  without  regard  to  the  transit 
from  day  to  night.  Michael  used  to  wonder  if  it  were  pos- 
sible that  this  fog  would  last  forever,  if  forever  he  would 
live  in  Carlington  Road  in  this  yellow  twilight,  if  his  mother 
had  forgotten  there  ever  was  such  a  person  as  Michael  Fane. 
But,  at  any  rate,  he  would  have  to  grow  up.  He  could  not 
always  be  the  same  size.  That  was  a  consolation.  It  was 
jolly  to  dream  of  being  grown  up,  to  plan  one's  behavior 
and  think  of  freedom.  The  emancipation  of  being  grown 
up  seemed  to  Michael  to  be  a  magnificent  prospect.  To 
begin  with  it  was  no  longer  possible  to  be  naughty.  He 
realized,  indeed,  that  crimes  were  a  temptation  to  some 
grown-ups,  that  people  of  a  certain  class  committed  murders 
and  burglaries,  but  as  he  felt  no  inclination  to  do  either,  he 
looked  forward  to  a  life  of  unbroken  virtue. 

So  far  as  he  could  ascertain,  grow^n-up  people  were  exempt 
from  even  the  necessity  to  distinguish  between  good  and 
evil.  If  Michael  examined  the  Commandments  one  by  one, 
this  became  obvious.  Thou  shalt  have  none  other  gods  than 
me.  Why  should  one  want  to  have?  One  was  enough. 
The  Children  of  Israel  must  be  different  from  Michael. 
He  could  not  understand  such  peculiar  people.  Make  not 
to  thyself  any  graven  image.  The  only  difficulty  about  this 
commandment  was  its  length  for  learning.  Otherwise  it 
did  not  seem  to  bear  on  present-day  life.  Thou  shalt  not 
take  the  name  of  the  Lord  thy  God  in  vain.  This  was 
another  vague  injunction.  Who  wanted  to?  Remember 
thou  keep  holy  the  Sabbath  Day.     It  was  obviously  a  simple 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  67 

matter  for  grown-up  people,  who  no  longer  enjoyed  playing 
with  toys,  to  keep  this  commandment.  At  present  it  was 
difficult  to  learn  and  difficult  to  keep.  Honor  thy  father 
and  thy  mother.  He  loved  his  mother.  He  would  always 
love  her,  even  if  she  forgot  him.  He  might  not  love  her 
so  much  as  formerly,  but  he  would  always  love  her.  Thou 
shalt  do  no  murder.  Michael  had  no  intention  of  doing 
murder.  Since  the  Hangman  in  Punch  and  Judy  he  was 
cured  of  any  inclination  towards  murder.  Thou  shalt  not 
commit  adultery.  Why  should  he  ever  want  to  marry  an- 
other man's  wife?  At  present  he  could  not  imagine  him- 
self married  to  anybody.  He  supposed  that  as  one  result 
of  growing  up  he  would  get  married.  But,  forewarned, 
he  would  take  care  not  to  choose  somebody  else's  wife. 
Thou  shalt  not  steal.  With  perfect  freedom  to  eat  when 
and  where  and  what  one  liked,  why  should  one  steal  ?  Thou 
shalt  not  bear  false  witness.  It  w^ould  not  be  necessary  to 
lie  when  grown  up,  because  one  could  not  then  be  punished. 
Thou  shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor  s  ox.  He  would  covet 
nothing,  for  when  he  was  grown  up  he  would  be  able  to 
obtain  whatever  he  wanted. 

This  desire  to  be  grown  up  sustained  him  through  much, 
even  through  the  long  foggy  nights  which  made  his  bed- 
room more  fearfully  still  than  before.  The  room  would 
hardly  seem  any  longer  to  exist  in  the  murk  which  crept 
through  it.  The  crocus-shaped  jet  of  the  gas  burned  in  the 
vaporous  midnight  with  an  unholy  flame  somehow,  thought 
Michael,  as  candles  must  look,  when  at  the  approach  of 
ghosts  they  burn  blue.  How  favorable  to  crime  was  fog, 
how  cleverly  the  thief  might  steal  over  the  coal-yard  at  the 
back  of  the  house  and  with  powerful  tools  compel  the  back 
door  to  open.  And  the  murderers,  how  they  must  rejoice 
in  the  impenetrable  air  as  with  long  knives  they  stole  out 
from  distant  streets  in  search  of  victims.  Michael's  nerves 
were  so  wrought  upon  by  the  unchanging  gloom  of  these 


68  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

wintry  days  that  even  to  be  sent  by  Nurse  to  fetch  her 
thimble  or  work-bag  before  tea  was  a  racking  experience. 

"Now  then,  Michael,  run  downstairs  like  a  good  boy  and 
fetch  my  needle  and  cotton  which  I  left  in  the  morning- 
room,"  Nurse  would  command.  And  in  the  gathering  dusk 
Michael  would  practically  slide  downstairs  until  he  reached 
the  basement.  Then,  clutching  the  object  of  his  errand,  he 
would  brace  himself  for  the  slower  ascent.  Suppose  that 
when  he  reached  the  hall  there  were  two  skeletons  sitting 
on  the  hall  chest?  Suppose  that  on  the  landing  above  a 
number  of  rats  rushed  out  from  the  housemaid's  closet  to 
bite  his  legs  and  climb  over  him  and  gnaw  his  face?  Sup- 
pose that  from  the  landing  outside  his  own  room  a  masked 
burglar  were  stealing  into  his  room  to  hide  himself  under 
the  bed?  Suppose  that  when  he  arrived  back  at  the  day- 
nursery,  Stella  and  Nurse  were  lying  with  their  heads 
chopped  off,  as  he  had  once  seen  a  family  represented  by  a 
pink  newspaper  in  the  window  of  a  little  shop  near  Ham- 
mersmith Broadway?  Michael  used  to  reach  his  goal,  white 
and  shaking,  and  slam  the  door  against  the  unseen  follower 
who  had  dogged  his  footsteps  from  the  coal-cellar.  The 
cries  of  a  London  twilight  used  to  oppress  him.  From  the 
darkening  streets  and  from  the  twinkling  houses  inexplicable 
sounds  floated  about  the  air.  They  had  the  sadness  of 
church-bells  and  like  church-bells  they  could  not  be  located 
exactly.  Michael  thought  that  London  was  the  most  mel- 
ancholy city  in  the  world.  Even  at  Christmas-time,  behind 
all  the  gaiety  and  gold  of  a  main  road  were  the  trackless 
streets  behind,  lit,  it  seemed,  merely  by  pin-points  of  gas, 
so  far  apart  were  the  lamp-posts,  such  a  small  sad  circle  of 
pavement  did  they  illuminate.  The  rest  was  shadows  and 
glooms  and  whispers.  Even  in  the  jollity  of  the  pantomime 
and  comfortable  smell  of  well-dressed  people  the  thought 
of  the  journey  home  through  the  rainy  evening  brooded 
upon  the  gayest  scene.     The  going  home  was  sad  indeed, 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  69 

as  in  the  farthest  corner  of  the  jolting  omnibus  they  jogged 
through  the  darkness.  The  painted  board  of  places  and 
fares  used  to  depress  Michael.  He  could  not  bear  to  think 
of  the  possibilities  opened  up  by  the  unknown  names  beyond 
Piccadilly  Circus.  Once  in  a  list  of  fares  he  read  the  word 
Whitechapel  and  shivered  at  the  thought  that  an  omnibus 
could  from  Whitechapel  pass  the  corner  of  Carlington  Road. 
This  very  omnibus  had  actually  come  from  the  place  where 
murders  were  done.  Murderers  might  at  this  moment  be 
travelling  in  his  company.  Michael  looked  askance  at  the 
six  nodding  travellers  who  sat  opposite,  at  the  fumes  of  their 
breath,  at  their  hands  clasped  round  the  handles  of  their 
umbrellas.  There,  for  all  he  knew,  sat  Jack  the  Ripper.  It 
happened  that  night  that  one  of  the  travellers,  an  old  gentle- 
man with  gold-rimmed  eyeglasses,  alighted  at  the  corner  and 
actually  turned  down  Carlington  Road.  Michael  was  hor- 
rified and  tugged  at  Nanny's  arm  to  make  her  go  faster. 

"Whyever  on  earth  are  you  dancing  along  like  a  bear  for? 
Do  you  want  to  go  somewhere,  you  fidgety  boy?"  said 
Nurse,  pulling  Michael  to  her  side  with  a  jerk. 

"Oh,  Nanny,  there's  a  man  following  us,  who  got  out  of 
our  bus." 

"Well,  why  shouldn't  he  get  out?  Tut-tut.  Other  peo- 
ple besides  you  want  to  get  out  of  buses.  I  shan't  ever  take 
you  to  the  pantomime  again,  if  you  aren't  careful." 

"Well,  I  will  be  careful,"  said  Michael  who,  perceiving 
the  lamp  in  their  front  hall,  recovered  from  his  fright  and 
became  anxious  to  propitiate  Nanny. 

"So  I  should  think,"  muttered  Nurse.  "Tut-tut-tut-tut- 
tut."  Michael  thought  she  would  never  stop  clicking  her 
tongue. 

About  this  time  with  the  fogs  and  the  rain  and  the  loneli- 
ness and  constant  fear  that  surrounded  him,  Michael  began 
to  feel  ill.  He  worried  over  his  thin  arms,  comparing  them 
with  the  sleek  Stella's.     His  golden  hair  lost  its  luster  and 


70  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

became  drab  and  dark  and  skimpy.  His  cheeks  lost  their 
rose-red,  and  black  lines  ringed  his  large  and  somber  blue 
eyes.  He  cared  for  little  else  but  reading,  and  even  reading 
tired  him  very  much,  so  that  once  he  actually  fell  asleep  over 
the  big  Don  Quixote.  About  two  hundred  pages  were  bent 
underneath  the  weight  of  his  body,  and  the  book  was  taken 
away  from  him  as  a  punishment  for  his  carelessness.  It  was 
placed  out  of  his  reach  on  top  of  the  bookcase  and  Michael 
used  to  stand  below  and  wish  for  it.  No  entreaties  were 
well  enough  expressed  to  move  Nurse;  and  Don  Quixote 
remained  high  out  of  reach  in  the  dust  and  shadows  of  the 
ceiling.  Nurse  grew  more  and  more  irrational  in  her  be- 
havior and  complained  more  and  more  of  the  neuralgia  to 
which  she  declared  she  was  a  positive  martyr.  Annie  went 
away  into  the  country  because  she  was  ill  and  a  withered 
housemaid  took  her  place,  while  the  tall  thin  house  in  Car- 
lington  Road  became  more  grim  every  day. 

Then  a  lucky  event  gave  Michael  a  new  interest.  Miss 
Caroline  Marrow  began  to  teach  him  the  elements  of  Bot- 
any, and  recommended  all  the  boys  to  procure  window-boxes 
for  themselves.  Michael  told  Nurse  about  this;  and, 
though  she  muttered  and  clicked  and  blew  a  great  deal,  one 
day  a  bandy-legged  man  actually  came  and  fitted  Michael's 
w^indow-sills  with  two  green  window-boxes.  He  spent  the 
whole  of  his  spare  time  in  prodding  the  sweet  new  mould, 
in  levelling  it  and  patting  it,  and  filling  in  unhappy  little 
crevices  which  had  been  overlooked.  Then  on  a  fine  spring 
morning  he  paid  a  visit  to  the  old  woman  who  sold  penny 
packets  of  seeds,  and  bought  nasturtiums,  mignonette,  Vir- 
ginia stocks  and  candytuft,  twelve  pansy  roots  and  twelve 
daisy  roots.  Michael's  flowers  grew  and  flourished  and  he 
loved  his  window-boxes.  He  liked  to  turn  towards  his 
window  at  night  now.  Somehow  those  flowers  were  a  pro- 
tection. He  liked  to  lie  in  bed  during  the  sparrow-thronged 
mornings  of  spring  and  fancy  how  the  birds  must  enjoy 


UNENDING    CHILDHOOD  71 

hopping  about  in  his  window-boxes.  He  was  always  careful 
to  scatter  plenty  of  crumbs,  so  that  they  should  not  be 
tempted  to  peck  up  his  seeds  or  pull  to  pieces  the  pansy  buds. 
He  was  disappointed  that  neither  the  daisies  nor  the  pansies 
smelt  sweet,  and  when  the  mignonette  bloomed,  he  almost 
sniffed  it  away,  so  lovely  was  the  perfume  of  it  during  the 
blue  days  of  June.  He  had  a  set  of  gardening  tools,  so 
small  and  suitable  to  the  size  of  his  garden  that  rake  and 
hoe  and  spade  and  fork  were  all  originally  fastened  to  one 
small  square  of  cardboard. 

But,  best  of  all,  when  the  pansies  were  still  a-blowing 
and  the  Virginia  stocks  were  fragrant,  and  when  from  his 
mother's  window  below  he  could  see  his  nasturtium  flowers, 
golden  and  red  and  even  tortoiseshell  against  the  light,  his 
mother  came  home  suddenly  for  a  surprise,  and  the  house 
woke  up. 

"But  you're  not  looking  well,  darling,"  she  said. 

"Oh,  yes,  quite  well.  Quite  well,"  muttered  Nurse. 
"Quite  well.     Mustn't  be  a  molly-coddle.     No.     No." 

"I  really  must  see  about  a  nice  governess  for  you,"  said 
Mrs.  Fane.    Nurse  sniffed  ominously. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE    FIRST   FAIRY   PRINCESS 

MISS  CARTHEW'S  arrival  widened  very  consider- 
ably Michael's  view  of  life.  Nurse's  crabbed 
face  and  stunted  figure  had  hitherto  appropriately 
enough  dominated  such  realities  of  existence  as  escaped  from 
the  glooms  and  shadows  of  his  solitary  childhood.  Michael 
had  for  so  long  been  familiar  with  ugliness  that  he  was 
dangerously  near  to  an  eternal  imprisonment  in  a  maze  of 
black  fancies.  He  had  come  to  take  pleasure  in  the  gro- 
tesque and  the  macabre,  and  even  on  the  sunniest  morning 
his  imagination  would  turn  to  twilight  and  foggy  eves,  to 
basements  and  empty  houses  and  loneliness  and  dust. 
Michael  would  read  furtively  the  forbidden  newspapers  that 
Nurse  occasionally  left  lying  about.  In  these  he  would 
search  for  murders  and  crimes,  and  from  their  association 
with  thrills  of  horror,  the  newspapers  themselves  had  grad- 
ually acquired  a  definitely  sinister  personality.  If  at  dusk 
Michael  found  a  newspaper  by  Nurse's  armchair,  he  would 
approach  it  with  beating  heart,  and  before  he  went  over  to 
read  it  where  close  to  the  window  the  light  of  day  lingered, 
he  would  brood  upon  his  own  daring,  as  if  some  Bluebeard's 
revenge  might  follow. 

When  Michael's  mother  was  at  home,  he  was  able  to 
resume  the  cheerfulness  of  the  last  occasion  on  which  her 
company  had  temporarily  relieved  his  solitude;  but  always 
behind    the  firelit  confidences,   the   scented   good  mornings 

'72 


THE    FIRST   FAIRY    PRINCESS        73 

and  good  nights,  the  gay  shopping  walks  and  all  the  joys 
which  belonged  to  him  and  her,  stood  threatening  and  in- 
evitable the  normal  existence  with  Nurse  in  which  these 
rosy  hours  must  be  remembered  as  only  hours,  fugitive  and 
insecure  and  rare.  Now  came  Miss  Carthew's  brisk  and 
lively  presence  to  make  many  alterations  in  the  life  of  64 
Carlington  Road,  Kensington. 

Michael's  introduction  to  his  governess  took  place  in  the 
presence  of  his  mother  and,  as  he  stood  watching  the  two 
women  in  conversation,  he  was  aware  of  a  tight-throated 
feeling  of  pleasure.  They  were  both  so  tall  and  slim  and 
beautiful:  they  were  both  so  straight  and  clean  that  they 
gave  him  the  glad  sensation  of  blinds  pulled  up  to  admit 
the  sun. 

"I  think  we're  going  to  be  rather  good  friends,"  said  Miss 
Carthew. 

Michael  could  only  stare  his  agreement,  but  he  managed 
to  run  before  Miss  Carthew  in  order  to  open  the  door 
politely,  when  she  was  going  out.  In  bed  that  night  he 
whispered  to  his  mother  how  much  he  liked  Miss  Carthew 
and  how  glad  he  was  that  he  could  leave  the  Misses  Mar- 
row's for  the  company  of  Miss  Carthew  all  day  long. 

"And  all  night?"  he  asked  wistfully. 

"No,  not  at  present,  darling,"  she  answered.  "Nanny 
will  still  look  after  you  at  night." 

"Will  she?"  Michael  questioned  somewhat  doubtfully. 

After  Mrs.  Fane  went  away,  there  was  a  short  interval 
before  the  newcomer  assumed  her  duties.  During  this  time 
Michael  hummed  incessantly  and  asked  Nurse  a  thousand 
questions  about  Miss  Carthew. 

"Goodness  gracious,  what  a  fuss  about  a  governess,"  com- 
mented Nanny.  "Tut-tut.  It  might  be  the  Queen  of  Eng- 
land. She'll  be  here  quite  soon  enough  for  everyone,  I 
daresay." 

It  fell  out  that  Miss  Carthew  was  to  arrive  on  Valentine's 
6 


74 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 


Day,  and  Michael  with  a  delicious  breathlessness  thought 
how  wonderful  it  would  be  to  present  her  with  a  Valentine. 
He  did  not  dare  tell  Nurse  of  his  intention;  but  he  hoped 
that  by  sending  Valentines  to  every  inmate  of  the  house  he 
might  be  allowed  to  include  Miss  Carthew.  Nurse  was 
agreeable  to  the  notion  of  receiving  a  token,  and  in  her  com- 
pany Michael  set  out  to  a  neighboring  stationer's  shop  to 
make  his  purchases.  A  Valentine  for  Cook  was  bought,  and 
one  of  precisely  the  same  design  for  Gladys  the  withered 
housemaid,  and  a  rather  better  one  for  Stella,  and  a  better 
one  still  for  Nurse. 

''Come  along  now,"  said  Nanny. 

*'Oh,  but  can't  I  get  one  for  Miss  Carthew?    Do  let  me." 

*'Tut-tut-tut.  What  nonsense.  I  do  declare.  Whatever 
do  you  want  to  give  her  a  Valentine  for?"  Nurse  demanded, 
as  she  tried  to  hustle  Michael  from  the  shop. 

"Oh,  do  let  me,  Nanny." 

"Well,  come  along,  and  don't  be  all  day  choosing.  Here, 
this  will  do,"  said  Nurse,  as  she  picked  one  from  the  penny 
tray. 

But  Michael  had  other  ideas.  He  had  noticed  an  exquis- 
ite Valentine  of  apple-green  satin  painted  with  the  rosiest 
of  Cupids,  the  most  crimson  of  pierced  hearts,  a  Valentine 
that  was  almost  a  sachet  so  thick  was  it,  so  daintily  fringed 
with  fretted  silver-paper. 

"That  one,"  he  declared,  pointing. 

"Now  what  have  I  told  you  about  pointing?" 

"That  large  one's  a  shilling,"  said  the  stationer. 

"Come  along,  come  along,"  grumbled  Nurse.  "Wasting 
good  money." 

"But  I  want  to  have  that  one,"  said  Michael. 

For  the  first  time  in  his  life  he  did  not  feel  at  all  afraid 
of  Nurse,  so  absolutely  determined  was  he  to  present  Miss 
Carthew  w^ith  the  Valentine  of  his  own  free  choice. 

"I  will  have  that  one,"  he  added.     "It's  my  money." 


THE    FIRST    FAIRY    PRINCESS        75 

"You  will,  will  you,  you  naughty  boy?  You  won't,  then. 
So  now!  You  dare  defy  me.  I  never  heard  of  such  a 
thing.  No,  nothing  more  this  morning,  thank  you,"  Nurse 
added,  turning  to  the  stationer.  **The  little  boy  has  got  all 
he  wants.  Say  'thank  you'  to  the  gentleman  and  'good 
morning,'  "  Nurse  commanded  Michael. 

""I  won't,"  he  declared.  "I  won't."  Scowling  so  that 
his  nose  nearly  vanished  into  his  forehead,  and  beating  back 
the  tears  that  were  surging  to  his  eyes,  Michael  followed 
Nurse  from  the  shop.  As  he  walked  home,  he  dug  his  nails 
wrathfully  into  the  envelope  of  Valentines,  and  then  sud- 
denly he  saw  a  drain  in  the  gutter.  He  hastily  stooped  and 
pushed  the  packet  between  the  bars  of  the  grating,  and  let 
it  fall  beyond  the  chance  of  recovery.  When  they  reached 
their  house,  Nurse  told  him  to  give  her  the  cards,  so  that 
they  might  not  be  soiled  before  presentation. 

"I've  dropped  them,"  said  Michael  sullenly. 

"Dropped  them?  Dropped  them?  What  do  you  mean — 
dropped  them?" 

"I  threw  them  away,"  said  Michael. 

"On  purpose?" 

"Yes.     I  can  do  what  I  like  with  my  own  things." 

"You  ungrateful  wicked  boy,"  said  Nurse,  horrified  by 
such  a  claim. 

"I  don't  care  if  I  am,"  Michael  answered.  "I  wanted  to 
give  Miss  Carthew  a  Valentine.  Mother  would  have  let 
me." 

"Your  mother  isn't  here.  And  when  she  isn't  here,  I'm 
your  mother,"  said  Nurse,  looking  more  old  and  wrinkled 
and  monkey-like  than  ever. 

"How  dare  you  say  you're  my  mother?"  gasped  the  out- 
raged son.  "You're  not.  You're  not.  Why,  you're  not  a 
lady,  so  you  couldn't  ever  be  my  mother," 

Hereupon  Nurse  disconcerted  Michael  by  bursting  into 
tears,   and  he  presently  found  himself   almost  petting  her 


76  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

and  declaring  that  he  was  very  sorry  for  having  been  so 
unkind.  He  found  a  certain  luxury  in  this  penitence  just 
as  he  used  to  enjoy  a  reconciliation  with  the  black  kittens. 
Perhaps  it  was  this  scene  with  Nurse  that  prompted  him 
soon  afterwards  to  the  creation  of  another  with  his  sister. 
The  second  scene  was  brought  about  by  Stella's  objection 
to  the  humming  with  which  Michael  was  somewhat  insist- 
ently celebrating  the  advent  of  Miss  Carthew. 

"Don't  hum,  Michael.  Don't  hum.  Please  don't  hum," 
Stella  begged  very  solemnly.  "Please  don't  hum,  because 
it  makes  my  head  hurt." 

"I  will  hum,  and  every  time  you  ask  me  not  to  hum,  I'll 
hum  more  louder,"  said  Michael. 

Stella  at  once  went  to  the  piano  in  the  day-nursery  and 
began  to  play  her  most  unmelodious  tune.  Michael  ran  to 
the  cupboard  and  produced  a  drum  which  he  banged  defi- 
antly. He  banged  it  so  violently  that  presently  the  drum, 
already  worn  very  thin,  burst.  Michael  was  furious  and 
immediately  proceeded  to  twang  an  overvarnished  zither. 
So  furiously  did  he  twang  the  zither  that  finally  he  caught 
one  of  his  nails  in  a  sharp  string  of  the  treble,  and  in  great 
pain  hurled  the  instrument  across  the  room.  Meanwhile, 
Stella  continued  to  play,  and  when  Michael  commanded 
her  to  stop,  answered  annoyingly  that  she  had  been  told  to 
practise. 

"Don't  say  pwactise,  you  silly.  Say  practise,"  Michael 
contemptuously  exclaimed. 

"Shan't,"  Stella  answered  with  that  cold  and  fat  stolidity 
of  demeanor  and  voice  which  disgusted  Michael  like  the 
fat  of  cold  mutton. 

"I'm  older  than  you,"  Michael  asserted. 

Stella  made  no  observation,  but  continued  to  play,  and 
Michael,  now  acutely  irritated,  rushed  to  the  piano  and 
slammed  dow^n  the  lid.  Stella  must  have  withdrawn  her 
fingers  in  time,  for  there  was  no  sign  of  any  pinch  or  bruise 


THE    FIRST    FAIRY    PRINCESS        77 

upon  them.  However,  she  began  to  cry,  while  Michael 
addressed  to  her  the  oration  which  for  a  long  time  he  had 
wished  to  utter. 

"You  are  silly.  You  are  a  cry-baby.  Fancy  crying  about 
nothing.  I  wouldn't.  Everybody  doesn't  want  to  hear  your 
stupid  piano-playing.  Boys  at  school  think  pianos  are  stupid. 
You  alwaj^s  grumble  about  my  humming.  You  ar^  a  cry- 
baby. 

"What  are  little  boys  made  of? 
Sugar  and  spice  and  all  that's  nice, 
That's  what  little  boys  are  made  of. 
What  are  little  girls  made  of? 
Slugs  and  snails  and  puppy-dogs'  tails, 
Ugh!     That's  what  little  girls  are  made  of." 

"They're  not,"  Stella  screamed.  "They're  not!" 
Michael's  perversion  of  the  original  rhyme  made  her  in- 
articulate with  grief  and  rage.  "They're  not,  you  naughty 
boy!" 

Michael,  contented  with  his  victory,  left  Stella  to  herself 
and  her  tears.  As  he  hummed  his  way  downstairs,  he 
thought  sensuously  of  the  imminent  reconciliation,  and  in 
about  ten  minutes,  having  found  some  barley-sugar  buried 
against  an  empty  day,  Michael  came  back  to  Stella  with 
peace-offerings  and  w^ords  of  comfort. 

Miss  Carthew  arrived  on  the  next  morning  and  the 
nervous  excitement  of  waiting  was  lulled.  Miss  Carthew 
came  through  the  rain  of  Valentine's  Day,  and  Michael 
hugged  himself  with  the  thought  of  her  taking  off  the  mack- 
intosh and  handing  it  to  Gladys  to  be  dried.  With  the 
removal  of  her  wet  outdoor  clothes.  Miss  Carthew  seemed 
to  come  nearer  to  Michael  and,  as  they  faced  each  other 
over  the  schoolroom  table  (for  the  day-nursery  in  one 
moment  had  become  the  schoolroom),  Michael  felt  that  he 
could  bear  not  being  grown  up  just  for  the  pleasure  of  sit- 
ting opposite  to  his  new  governess. 


78  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

It  was  not  so  much  by  these  lessons  that  Michael's  out- 
look was  widened  as  by  the  conversations  he  enjoyed  with 
Miss  Carthew^  during  their  afternoon  w^alks.  She  told  him, 
so  far  as  she  could,  everything  that  he  desired  to  know.  She 
never  accused  him  of  being  old-fashioned  or  inquisitive,  and 
indeed  as  good  as  made  him  feel  that  the  more  questions  he 
asked  the  better  she  would  like  it.  Miss  Carthew  had  all 
the  mental  and  imaginative  charm  of  the  late  Mrs.  Frith  in 
combination  with  an  outward  attractiveness  that  made  her 
more  dearly  beloved.  Indeed  Miss  Carthew  had  number- 
less pleasant  qualities.  If  she  promised  anything,  the  prom- 
ise was  always  kept  to  the  letter.  If  Michael  did  not  know 
his  lesson  or  omitted  the  performance  of  an  ordained  task. 
Miss  Carthew  was  willing  to  hear  the  explanation  of  his 
failure  and  was  never  unreasonable  in  her  judgment.  One 
morning  very  soon  after  her  arrival,  Michael  was  unable  to 
repeat  satisfactorily  the  verse  of  the  psalm  Venite  Adoremus 
set  for  him  to  learn. 

"Why  don't  you  know  it,  Michael?"  Miss  Carthew  asked. 

"I  had  to  go  to  bed." 

"But  surely  you  had  plenty  of  time  before  you  went  to 
bed?"  Miss  Carthew  persisted. 

"Nanny  wanted  to  go  out,  and  I  went  to  bed  early," 
Michael  explained. 

For  a  moment  or  two  Miss  Carthew  considered  the  prob- 
lem silently.  Then  she  rang  the  bell  and  told  withered 
Gladys  that  she  wished  to  speak  to  Nurse.  Presently  Nurse 
came  in,  very  aggressive  and  puckered. 

"Did  Michael  have  to  go  to  bed  very  early  last  night?" 
Miss  Carthew  inquired. 

"Oh,  yes.  Yes,"  Nurse  blew  out.  "Early  last  night. 
Wednesday  night.     Yes.     I  had  to  go  out.     Yes." 

"What  time  did  he  go  to  bed?"  Miss  Carthew  went  on. 

"What  time?"  repeated  Nurse.  "Why,  the  proper  time, 
of  course." 


THE    FIRST   FAIRY   PRINCESS        79 

''Don't  be  insolent,"  said  Miss  Carthew  very  tranquilly. 

Nurse  blustered  and  wrinkled  her  nose  and  frowned  and 
came  very  close  to  Miss  Carthew  and  peered  up  into  her 
face,  blowing  harder  than  ever. 

"The  arrangements  can't  be  altered  for  governesses,"  said 
Nurse.     *'No.     Tut-tut.     Never  heard  of  such  a  thing." 

**The  arrangements  will  be  altered.  In  future  Michael 
will  go  to  bed  at  half-past  seven.  It's  not  good  for  him  to 
go  to  bed  earlier.     Do  you  understand?" 

"Do  I  understand?  No,  I  don't  understand,"  Nurse 
snapped. 

"Very  well,"  said  Miss  Carthew.  "You  need  not  wait, 
Nurse." 

Nurse  blinked  and  peered  and  fumed,  but  Miss  Carthew 
paid  so  little  attention  that  Michael  felt  himself  blushing 
for  her  humiliation.  However,  he  did  not  go  to  bed  that 
night  till  half-past  seven,  and  at  the  end  of  the  week  could 
rattle  off  the  Venite  in  two  breaths.  It  w^as  extraordinary 
how  Nurse  shrank  into  nothing  at  Miss  Carthew's  approach 
like  a  witch  in  the  presence  of  a  good  fairy. 

The  nights  were  still  a  trial  to  Michael,  but  gradually 
they  became  less  terrible,  as  Miss  Carthew's  conversation 
gave  him  something  better  to  meditate  upon  than  the  possi- 
bilities of  disaster  and  crime.  On  the  afternoon  walks 
would  be  told  stories  of  Miss  Carthew's  youth  in  the  West 
Country,  of  cliffs  and  sea-birds  and  wrecks,  of  yachting 
cruises  and  swimming,  of  golden  sands  and  magical  coves 
and  green  islands.  Miss  Carthew's  own  father  had  been  a 
captain  in  the  Royal  Navy  and  she  had  had  one  brother,  a 
midshipman,  who  was  drowned  in  trying  to  save  the  life 
of  his  friend.  By  all  accounts  the  Carthews  must  have  lived 
in  as  wonderful  a  house  as  was  ever  known.  From  the 
windows  it  was  possible  to  look  down  into  the  very  sea  itself, 
and  from  the  front  door,  all  wreathed  in  roses,  ran  a  wind- 
ing path  edged  with  white  stones  down  to  the  foot  of  the 


8o  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

cliff.  Day  and  night  great  ships  used  to  sail  from  the 
harbor,  some  outward  bound  with  the  crew  singing  in  the 
cool  airs  of  a  summer  morning,  some  homeward  bound,  bat- 
tered by  storms.  Miss  Carthew,  when  a  little  girl,  had 
been  the  intimate  friend  of  many  coastguards,  had  been 
allowed  to  peep  through  their  long  telescopes,  had  actually 
seen  a  cannon  fired  at  close  quarters.  Before  her  own  eyes 
the  lifeboat  had  plunged  forth  to  rescue  ships,  and  with  her 
own  hands  she  had  caught  fish  on  quiet  sunny  mornings  and 
on  windless  nights  under  the  moon.  Her  most  valuable 
possession,  how^ever,  must  have  been  that  father  w^ho  could 
sit  for  hours  and  never  tell  the  same  tale  twice,  but  hold  all 
who  heard  him  entranced  with  a  narrative  of  hostile  In- 
dians, of  Chinese  junks,  of  cannibals  and  wrecks  and  mu- 
tinies and  bombardments.  It  was  sad  to  hear  that  Captain 
Carthew  was  now  dead :  Michael  would  have  been  glad  to 
make  his  acquaintance.  It  was  sad  to  hear  that  the  Car- 
thews  no  longer  lived  in  the  West  within  the  sound  of 
waves  and  winds;  but  it  was  consoling  to  learn  that  they 
still  lived  in  the  depth  of  the  country  and  that  some  time,, 
perhaps  during  this  very  next  summer,  Michael  should  cer- 
tainly pay  Mrs.  Carthew  a  visit.  He  w^ould  meet  other 
Miss  Carthews,  one  of  whom  was  only  fourteen  and  could 
obviously  without  ceremony  be  hailed  immediately  as  Nancy. 
Of  Joan  and  May,  who  were  older,  Michael  spoke  in  terms 
of  the  familiar  Christian  name  with  embarrassment,  and  he 
was  much  perplexed  in  his  own  mind  how  he  should  address 
them  when  actually  they  met. 

"I  wish  you  were  going  to  take  us  away  for  our  holidays 
to  the  seaside,"  Michael  said. 

"Perhaps  I  will  another  time,"  Miss  Carthew  replied. 
"But  this  year  you  and  Stella  are  going  with  Nurse,  because 
Stella  isn't  going  to  begin  lessons  with  me  till  you  go  to 
school." 

"Am  I  really  going  to  school?" 


THE    FIRST   FAIRY    PRINCESS        8i 

"Yes,  to  St.  James'  Preparatory  School,"  Miss  Carthew 
assured  him. 

In  consideration  of  Michael's  swiftly  approaching  adven- 
ture, he  was  allowed  to  take  in  the  Boy's  Own  Paper 
monthly,  and  as  an  even  greater  concession  to  age  he  was 
allowed  to  make  friends  with  several  boys  in  Carlington 
Road,  some  of  whom  were  already  scholars  of  St.  James' 
Preparatory  School  and  one  of  whom  actually  had  a  brother 
at  St.  James'  School  itself,  that  gigantic  red  building  whose 
gates  Michael  himself  would  enter  of  right  one  day,  how- 
ever difficult  at  present  this  was  to  believe. 

What  with  the  prospect  of  going  to  school  in  the  autumn 
and  Miss  Carthew's  tales  of  freedom  and  naval  life,  Michael 
began  to  disapprove  more  than  ever  of  Nurse's  manners 
and  appearance.  He  did  not  at  all  relish  the  notion  of  pass- 
ing away  the  summer  holidays  in  her  society.  To  be  sure, 
for  the  end  of  the  time  he  had  been  invited  by  Mrs.  Car- 
thew's own  thin  writing  to  spend  a  week  with  her  in  Hamp- 
shire; but  that  was  at  least  a  month  away,  and  meanwhile 
there  was  this  month  to  be  endured  with  Nurse  at  Mr.  and 
Mrs.  Wagland's  lodgings,  where  the  harmonium  was  played 
and  conversation  was  carried  on  by  whispers  and  the 
mysterious  nods  of  three  heads.  However,  the  beginning 
of  August  arrived,  and  Miss  Carthew  said  good-bye  for  a 
month.  Wooden  spades,  still  gritty  with  last  year's  sand, 
were  produced  from  the  farthest  corners  of  cupboards; 
mouldy  shrimping  nets  and  dirtied  buckets  and  canvas  shoes 
lay  about  on  the  bed,  and  at  last,  huddled  in  paraphernalia. 
Nurse  and  Stella  and  Michael  jogged  along  to  the  railway 
station,  a  miserable  hour  for  Michael,  who  all  the  time 
was  dreading  many  unfortunate  events,  as  for  the  cabman 
to  get  down  from  his  box  and  quarrel  about  the  fare,  or 
for  the  train  to  be  full,  or  for  Stella  to  be  sick  during  the 
journey,  or  for  him  and  her  to  lose  Nurse,  or  for  all  of  them 
to  get  into  the  wrong  train,  or  for  a  railway  accident  to 


82  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

happen,  or  for  any  of  the  uncomfortable  contingencies  to 
which  seaside  travelers  were  liable. 

During  these  holidays  Michael  grew  more  and  more  deeply 
ashamed  of  Nurse,  and  more  and  more  acutely  sensitive 
to  her  manners  and  appearance.  He  was  afraid  that  people 
on  the  front  would  mistake  him  and  Stella  for  her  children. 
He  grew  hot  with  shame  when  he  fancied  that  people  looked 
at  him.  He  used  to  loiter  behind  on  their  walks  and 
pretended  that  he  did  not  belong  to  Nurse  and  hope  sin- 
cerely that  nobody  would  think  of  connecting  him  with  such 
an  ugly  old  woman.  He  had  heard  much  talk  of  "ladies 
and  gentlemen"  at  the  Kindergarten,  and  since  then  Miss 
Carthew  had  indirectly  confirmed  his  supposition  that  it 
was  a  terrible  thing  not  to  be  a  gentleman  and  the  son  of 
a  gentleman.  He  grew  very  critical  of  his  own  dress  and 
wished  that  he  w^ere  not  compelled  to  wear  a  sailor-top 
that  was  slightly  shabby.  Once  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wagland 
accompanied  them  to  church  on  a  Sunday  morning,  and 
Michael  was  horrified.  People  would  inevitably  think  that 
he  was  the  son  of  Mr.  Wagland.  What  a  terrible  thing  that 
would  be.  He  loitered  farther  behind  than  ever,  and  would 
like  to  have  killed  Mr.  Wagland,  when  he  offered  him  the 
half  of  his  h5'mn-book.  This  incident  seemed  to  compromise 
him  finally,  to  drag  him  down  from  the  society  of  Miss 
Carthew  to  a  degraded  status  of  unutterable  commonness. 
Mr.  Wagland  would  persist  in  digging  him  with  his  elbow 
and  urging  him  to  sing  up.  Worse  even,  he  once  said  quite 
audibly,  "Spit  it  out,  sonny."     Michael  reeled  with  shame. 

September  arrived  at  last,  and  then  Michael  realized 
suddenly  that  he  would  have  to  make  the  journey  to  Hamp- 
shire alone.  This  seemed  to  him  the  most  astonishing  adven- 
ture of  his  life.  He  surveyed  his  existence  from  the  earliest 
daw^n  of  consciousness  to  the  last  blush  caused  by  Nurse's 
abominable  habits,  and  could  see  no  parallel  of  daring. 
He  was  about  to  enter  upon  a  direct  relationship  with  the 


THE    FIRST   FAIRY   PRINCESS       83 

world  of  men.  He  would  have  to  inquire  of  porters  and 
guards;  he  would  have  to  be  polite  without  being  prodded 
to  ladies  sitting  opposite.  No  doubt  they  would  ask  ques- 
tions of  him  and  he  would  have  to  answer  distinctly.  And 
beyond  this  immediate  encounter  with  reality  was  School. 
He  had  not  grasped  how  near  he  was  to  the  first  morning. 
A  feeling  of  hopelessness,  of  inability  to  grapple  with  the 
facts  of  life  seized  him.  Growing  old  was  a  very  desperate 
business  after  all.  How  remote  he  was  getting  from 
Nurse,  how  far  away  from  the  dingy  solitude  which  had  so 
long  oppressed  his  spirit.  Already  she  seemed  unimportant 
and  already  he  could  almost  laugh  at  the  absurdity  of  being 
mistaken  for  a  relation  of  hers.  The  world  was  opening 
her  arms  and  calling  to  him. 

On  the  day  before  he  was  to  set  out  to  Hampshire,  he 
and  Nurse  and  Stella  and  Mr.  Wagland  and  Mrs.  Wagland 
drove  in  a  wagonette  to  picnic  somewhere  in  the  country 
behind  the  sea.  It  had  been  a  dry  August  and  the  rolling 
chalk  downs  over  which  they  walked  were  uniformly  brown. 
The  knapweed  was  stunted  and  the  scabious  blooms  drooped 
towards  the  dusty  pasture.  Only  the  flamy  ladies'  slippers 
seemed  appropriate  to  the  miles  of  heat  that  flickered  against 
the  landscape.  Michael  ran  off  alone,  sliding  as  he  went 
where  the  drought  had  singed  the  close-cropped  grass.  The 
rabbits  ran  to  right  and  left  of  him,  throwing  distorted 
shadows  on  the  long  slopes,  and  once  a  field-mouse  skipped 
anxiously  across  his  path.  On  the  rounded  summit  of  the 
highest  hill  within  reach  he  sat  down  near  a  clump  of 
tremulous  harebells.  The  sky  was  on  every  side  of  him, 
the  largest  sky  ever  imagined.  Far  away  in  front  was  the 
shining  sea,  above  whose  nebulous  horizon  ships  hung 
motionless.  Up  here  was  the  sound  of  summer  airs,  the 
faint  lisp  of  wind  in  parched  herbage,  the  twitter  of  desolate 
birds,  and  in  some  unseen  vale  below  the  bleating  of  a  flock 
of  sheep.      Bumblebees   droned   from   flower   to   flower   of 


84  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

the  harebells  and  a  church  clock  struck  the  hour  of  four. 
The  world  was  opening  her  arms  and  calling  to  Michael. 
He  felt  up  there  in  the  silver  weather  as  the  ugly  duckling 
must  have  felt  when  he  saw  himself  to  be  a  radiant  swan. 
Michael  almost  believed,  in  this  bewitching  meditation,  that 
he  was  in  a  story  by  Hans  Christian  Andersen.  Always 
in  those  tales  the  people  flew  above  the  world  whether  in 
snow-time  or  in  spring-time.  It  was  really  like  flying  to 
sit  up  here.  For  the  first  time  Michael  flung  w^ide  his 
arms  to  grasp  the  unattainable;  and,  as  he  presently  charged 
down  the  hillside  in  answer  to  distant  holloas  from  the 
picnic  party,  he  saw  before  him  a  flock  of  sheep  manoeuver- 
ing  before  his  advance.  Michael  shouted  and  kept  a  swift 
course,  remembering  Don  Quixote  and  laughing  w^hen  he 
saw  the  flock  break  into  units  and  gallop  up  the  opposite 
slope. 

"Tut-tut,"  clicked  Nurse.  "What  a  mess  you  do  get 
yourself  into,  I'm  sure.  Can't  you  sit  down  and  enjoy 
yourself  quietly?" 

"Did  you  see  me  make  those  silly  old  sheep  run  away, 
Nanny?"  Michael  asked. 

"Yes,  I  did.  And  I  should  be  ashamed  to  frighten  poor 
animals  so.     You'll  get  the  policeman  on  your  tracks." 

"I  shouldn't  care,"  said  Michael  boastfully.  "He 
wouldn't  be  able  to  catch  me." 

"Wouldn't  he?"  said  Nurse  very  knowingly,  as  she  laid 
out  the  tea-cups  on  a  red  rug. 

"Oh,  Michael,"  Stella  begged,  "don't  make  a  policeman 
come  after  you." 

Michael  was  intoxicated  by  the  thought  of  his  future. 
He  could  not  recognize  the  ability  of  any  policeman  to 
check  his  desires,  and  because  it  was  impossible  to  voice 
in  any  other  way  the  impulses  and  ambitions  and  hopes 
that  were  surging  in  his  soul,  he  went  on  boasting. 

"Ha,  I'd  like  to  see  an  old  policeman  run  after  me.     I'd 


THE    FIRST   FAIRY    PRINCESS        85 

trip  him  up  and  roll  him  down  the  hill,  I  would.  I'd 
put  his  head  in  a  rabbit  hole.  I  would.  I  can  run  faster 
than  a  policeman.     I  can." 

Michael  was  swaggering  round  and  round  the  spread-out 
cups  and  saucers  and  plates. 

"If  you  put  your  foot  on  those  jam  sandwiches,  you'll 
go  straight  back  to  the  carriage  and  wait  there  till  we've 
finished  tea.    Do  you  hear?" 

Michael  considered  for  a  moment  the  possibility  that 
Nanny  might  execute  this  threat.  He  decided  that  she 
might  and  temporarily  sobered  down.  But  the  air  was  in 
his  veins  and  all  tea-time  he  could  not  chatter  fast  enough 
to  keep  pace  with  the  new  power  which  was  inspiring  him 
with  inexpressible  energy.  He  talked  of  what  he  was 
going  to  do  in  Hampshire;  he  talked  of  what  he  was  going 
to  do  on  the  journey;  he  talked  of  what  he  was  going  to 
do  at  school  and  when  he  was  grown  up.  He  arranged 
Stella's  future  and  bragged  and  boasted  and  fidgeted  and 
shouted,  so  that  Nurse  looked  at  him  in  amazement. 

"Whatever's  the  matter  with  you?"  she  asked. 

Just  then  a  Tortoiseshell  butterfly  came  soaring  past  and 
Michael,  swinging  round  on  both  his  legs  to  watch  the  flight, 
swept  half  the  tea-cups  with  him.  For  a  moment  he  was 
abashed;  but  after  a  long  sermon  of  reproof  from  Nurse 
he  was  much  nearer  to  laughter  than  tears. 

A  gloomy  reaction  succeeded,  as  the  party  drove  home 
through  the  gray  evening  that  was  falling  sadly  over  the 
countryside.  A  chilly  wind  rustled  in  the  hedgerows 
and  blew  the  white  dust  in  clouds  behind  the  wagonette. 
Michael  became  his  silent  self  again  and  was  now  filled  with 
apprehensions.  All  that  had  seemed  so  easy  to  attain  was 
now  complicated  by  the  unknown.  He  would  have  been 
glad  of  Miss  Carthew's  company.  The  green-shaded  lamp 
and  creaking  harmonium  of  the  seaside  lodgings  were  a 
dismal  end  to  all  that  loveliness  of  wind  and  silver  so  soon 


86  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

finished.     Nevertheless  It  had  made  him  ver\-  sleepy  and  he 
was  secretly  glad  to  get  to  bed. 

The  next  day  was  a  dream  from  which  he  woke  to  find 
himself  clinging  affectionately  to  Miss  Carthew's  arm 
and  talking  shyly  to  Nancy  Carthew  and  a  sidling  spaniel 
alternately,  as  they  walked  from  the  still  country  station 
and  packed  themselves  into  a  pony-chaise  that  was  waiting 
outside  behind  a  dun  pony. 


CHAPTER  VI 
THE   ENCHANTED    PALACE 

THE  dun  pony  ambled  through  the  lanes  to  the 
village  of  Basfngstead  Minor  where  Mrs.  Carthew 
and  her  four  daughters  lived  in  a  house  called 
Cobble  Place.  It  stood  close  to  the  road  and  was  two 
stories  high,  very  trim  and  covered  with  cotoneaster.  On 
either  side  of  the  door  were  two  windows  and  above  it 
in  a  level  row  five  more  windows;  the  roof  was  thatched. 
On  the  left  of  the  house  were  double  doors  which  led  into 
the  stable-yard,  a  large  stable-yard  overlooked  by  a  number 
of  irregular  gables  in  the  side  of  the  house  and  continually 
fluttered  by  white  fantail  pigeons.  Into  the  stable-yard 
the  dun  pony  turned,  where,  clustered  in  the  side  entrance 
of  Cobble  Place  under  a  clematis-wreathed  porch,  stood 
Mrs.  Carthew  and  Miss  May  Carthew  and  Miss  Joan 
Carthew,  all  smiling  very  pleasantly  at  Michael  and  all 
evidently  very  glad  to  see  him  safely  arrived.  Michael 
climbed  out  of  the  chaise  and  politely  shook  hands  with 
Mrs.  Carthew  and  said  he  was  very  well  and  had  had  a 
comfortable  journey  and  would  like  some  tea  very  much, 
although  if  Nancy  thought  it  was  best  he  was  quite  ready 
to  see  her  donkey  before  doing  anything  else.  However, 
Nancy  was  told  that  she  must  wait,  and  soon  Michael  was 
sitting  at  a  large  round  table  in  a  shady  dining-room,  eating 
hot  buttered   tea-cake  and   chocolate  cake   and   macaroons 

87 


88  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

with  bread-and-butter  as  an  afterthought  of  duty.  He 
enjoyed  drinking  his  tea  out  of  a  thin  teacup  and  he  liked 
the  silver  and  the  satin  tea-cozy  and  the  yellow  Persian  cat 
purring  on  the  hearthrug  and  the  bullfinch  flitting  from 
perch  to  perch  of  his  bright  cage.  He  noticed  with  pleasure 
that  the  pictures  on  the  wall  w^ere  full  of  interest  and  detail, 
and  was  particularly  impressed  by  two  very  long  steel 
engravings  of  the  Death  of  Nelson  and  the  Meeting  of 
Wellington  and  Bliicher  on  the  field  of  Waterloo.  The  only 
flaw  in  his  pleasure  was  the  difficulty  of  addressing  Miss 
May  Carthew  and  Miss  Joan  Carthew,  and  he  wished  that 
his  own  real  Miss  Carthew  would  suggest  a  solution.  As 
for  the  bedroom  to  which  he  was  taken  after  tea,  Michael 
thought  there  never  could  have  been  such  a  jolly  room 
before.  It  was  just  the  right  size,  as  snug  as  possible  with  its 
gay  w^all-paper  and  crackling  chintzes  and  ribboned  bed. 
The  counterpane  was  patchwork  and  therefore  held  the 
promise  of  perpetual  entertainment.  The  dressing-table 
was  neatly  set  with  china  toilet  articles  whose  individual 
importance  Michael  could  not  discover.  One  in  particular 
like  the  antler  of  a  stag  stuck  upright  in  a  china  tray  he  was. 
very  anxious  to  understand,  and  when  he  was  told  it  was 
intended  for  rings  to  hang  upon,  he  wished  he  had  a  dozen 
rings  to  adorn  so  neat  a  device. 

After  he  had  with  Miss  Carthew 's  help  unpacked  and  put 
his  clothes  away,  Michael  joined  Nancy  in  the  stable-yard. 
He  stroked  the  donkey  and  the  dun-colored  pony  and 
watched  the  fantail  pigeons  in  snowy  circles  against  the  pale 
blue  sky.  He  watched  the  gardener  stirring  up  some  strange 
stuff  for  the  pig  that  grunted  impatiently.  He  watched 
the  pleasant  Carthew  cook  shelling  peas  in  the  slanting 
sunlight  by  the  kitchen  door.  The  air  was  very  peaceful, 
full  of  soft  sounds  of  lowing  cows,  of  ducks  and  hens  and 
sheep.  The  air  was  spangled  with  glittering  insects;  over 
a  red  wall  hung  down  the  branch  of  a  plum  tree,  loaded 


THE    ENCHANTED    PALACE  89 

with  creamy  ovals  of  fruit,  already  rose-flushed  with  sum- 
mer.    Nancy  said  they  must  soon  go  into  the  garden. 

''Is  there  a  garden  more  than  this?"  Michael  asked. 
His  bedroom  window  had  looked  out  on  to  the  stable-yard. 

"Through  here,"  said  Nancy.  She  led  the  way  to  a  door 
set  in  the  wall,  which  when  open  showed  a  green  glowing 
oblong  of  light  that  made  Michael  catch  his  breath  in 
wonder. 

Then  together  he  and  Nancy  sauntered  through  what  was 
surely  the  loveliest  garden  in  the  world.  Michael  could 
scarcely  bear  to  speak,  so  completely  did  it  fulfil  every 
faintest  hope.  All  along  the  red  walls  were  apples  and  pears 
and  plums  and  peaches;  all  along  the  paths  were  masses 
of  flowers,  phloxes  and  early  Michaelmas  daisies  and  Japa- 
nese anemones  and  sunflowers  and  red-hot  pokers  and 
dahlias.  The  air  was  so  golden  and  balmy  that  it  seemed  as 
though  the  sunlight  must  have  been  locked  up  in  this  garden 
for  years.  At  the  bottom  of  the  vivid  path  was  a  stream 
with  real  fish  swimming  backward  and  forward,  and 
beyond  the  stream,  safely  guarded  and  therefore  perfectly 
beautiful,  were  cows  stalking  through  a  field  beyond  which 
was  a  dark  wood  beyond  which  was  a  high  hill  with  a  gray 
tower  on  the  top  of  it.  Some  princess  must  have  made  this 
garden.  He  and  Nancy  turned  and  walked  by  the  stream 
on  which  was  actually  moored  a  punt,  a  joy  for  to-morrow, 
since,  explained  Nancy,  Maud  had  said  they  were  not  to 
go  on  the  river  this  afternoon.  How  wonderful  it  was, 
Michael  thought,  to  hear  his  dearest  Miss  Carthew  called 
Maud.  Never  was  spoken  so  sweet  a  name  as  Maud.  He 
would  say  it  to  himself  in  bed  that  night,  and  in  the  morning 
he  would  wake  with  Maud  calling  to  him  from  sleep.  Then 
he  and  Nancy  turned  from  the  tempting  stream  and  walked 
up  a  pleached  alley  of  withies  woven  and  interarched. 
Over  them  September  roses  bloomed  with  fawn  and  ivory 
and  copper  and  salmon-pink  buds  and  blossoms.  At  the 
7 


90  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

end  of  the  pleached  alley  was  a  mulberry  tree  with  a  seat 
round  its  trunk  and  a  thick  lawn  that  ran  right  up  to  the 
house  itself.  On  the  lawn  Nancy  and  Michael  played  quoits 
and  bowls  and  chased  Ambrose  the  spaniel,  until  the  sun 
sent  still  more  slanting  shadows  across  the  garden  and  it  was 
possible  to  feel  that  night  was  just  behind  the  hill  beyond 
the  stream.  The  sun  went  down.  The  air  grew  chilly 
and  Miss  Carthew  appeared  from  the  door,  beckoning  to 
Michael.  She  sat  with  him  in  the  dusky  dining-room 
while  he  ate  his  bread  and  milk,  and  told  him  of  her  brother 
the  midshipman,  while  he  looked  pensively  at  the  picture 
of  the  Death  of  Nelson.  Then  Michael  went  to  the  draw- 
ing-room where  all  the  sisters  and  Mrs.  Carthew  herself 
were  sitting.  He  kissed  everybody  good-night  in  turn,  and 
Mrs.  Carthew  put  on  a  pair  of  spectacles  in  order  to  follow 
his  exit  from  the  room  with  a  kindly  smile.  Miss  Carthew 
sat  with  him  while  he  undressed,  and  when  he  was  in  bed 
she  told  him  another  story  and  kissed  him  good-night  and 
blew  out  the  candle,  and  before  the  sound  of  pleasant  voices 
coming  upstairs  from  the  supper-table  had  ceased  Michael 
was  fast  asleep. 

In  the  morning  while  he  was  lying  watching  the  shadows 
on  the  ceiling,  Nancy's  freckled  face  appeared  round  the 
door. 

"Hurry  up  and  dress,"  she  cried.    "Fishing!" 

Michael  had  never  dressed  so  quickly  before.  In  fact 
when  he  was  ready,  he  had  to  wait  for  Nancy  who  had  called 
him  before  she  had  dressed  herself.  Nancy  and  Michael 
lived  a  lifetime  of  delight  in  that  golden  hour  of  waiting 
for  breakfast. 

However,  at  Cobble  Place  every  minute  was  a  lifetime  of 
delight  to  Michael.  He  forgot  all  about  everything  except 
being  happy.  His  embarrassment  with  regard  to  the  correct 
way  of  addressing  May  and  Joan  was  terminated  by  being 
told  to  call  them  May  and  Joan.    He  was  shown  the  treas- 


THE    ENCHANTED    PALACE,        91 

ures  of  their  bedrooms,  the  butterfly  collections,  the  sword 
of  Captain  Carthew,  the  dirk  of  their  brother  the  midship- 
man, the  birds'  eggs,  the  fossils,  the  bones,  the  dried  flowers, 
the  photographs,  the  autographs,  in  fact  everything  that 
was  most  absorbing  to  look  at.  With  Mrs.  Carthew  he  took 
sedate  walks  into  the  village,  and  held  the  flowers  while  she 
decorated  the  altar  in  church,  and  sat  with  her  while  she 
talked  to  bedridden  old  women.  With  Nancy  on  one 
memorable  day  he  crossed  the  river  and  disembarked  on  the 
other  side  and  walked  through  the  field  of  cows,  through  the 
meadowsweet  and  purple  loosestrife  and  spearmint.  Then 
they  picked  blackberries  and  dewberries  by  the  edge  of 
the  wood  and  walked  on  beneath  the  trees  without  caring 
about  trespassing  or  tramps  or  anything  else.  On  the  other 
side  they  came  out  at  the  foot  of  the  high  hill.  Up  they 
walked,  up  and  up  until  they  reached  the  gray  tower  at 
the  top,  and  then,  to  Michael's  amazement,  Nancy  produced 
the  key  of  the  tower  and  opened  the  door. 

''Can  we  really  go  in?"  asked  Michael,  staggered  by  the 
adventure. 

"Of  course.     We  can  always  get  the  key,"  said  Nancy. 

They  walked  up  some  winding  stone  steps  that  smelt 
very  damp,  and  at  the  top  they  pushed  open  a  trap-door 
and  walked  out  on  top  of  the  tower.  Michael  leaned  over 
the   parapet   and   for   the   second    time   beheld   the   world. 

There  was  no  sea,  but  there  were  woods  and  streams 
and  spires  and  fields  and  villages  and  smoke  from  farms. 
There  were  blue  distances  on  every  side  and  great  white 
clouds  moving  across  the  sky.  The  winds  battled  against 
the  tower  and  sang  in  Michael's  ears  and  ruflied  his  hair 
and  crimsoned  his  cheeks.  He  could  see  the  fantail  pigeons 
of  Cobble  Place  circling  below.  He  could  look  dow^n  on 
the  wood  and  the  river  they  had  just  crossed.  He  could 
see  the  garden  and  his  dearest  Miss  Carthew  walking  on  the 
lawn. 


92  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Oh,  Nancy,"  he  said,  "it's  glorious." 

"Yes,  it  is  rather  decent,"  Nancy  agreed. 

"I  suppose  that's  almost  all  of  England  you  can  see." 

"Only  four  counties,"  said  Nancy  carelessly.  "Berkshire, 
and  I  forget  the  other  three.  We  toboggan  down  this  hill 
in  winter.     That's  rather  decent  too." 

"I'd  like  to  come  here  every  day,"  sighed  Michael.  "I'd 
like  to  have  this  tower  for  my  very  own.  What  castle  is 
it  called?" 

"Grogg's  Folly,"  said  Nancy  abruptly. 

Michael  wished  the  tow^er  were  not  called  Grogg's  Folly, 
and  very  soon  Nancy  and  he,  shouting  and  laughing,  were 
running  at  full  speed  down  the  hill  toward  Cobble  Place, 
while  the  stalks  of  the  plantains  whipped  his  bare  legs  and 
larks  flew  up  in  alarm  before  his  advance. 

The  time  of  his  stay  at  Cobble  Place  was  drawing  to  a 
close;  the  hour  of  his  greatest  adventure  was  near.  It 
had  been  a  visit  of  unspoiled  enjoj^ment;  and,  on  his  last 
night,  Michael  was  allowed  for  a  treat  to  stay  up  to  supper, 
to  sit  at  the  round  table  rose-stained  by  the  brooding  lamp, 
while  the  rest  of  the  room  was  a  comfortable  mystery  in 
which  the  parlormaid's  cap  and  apron  flitted  whitely  to 
and  fro.  Nor  did  Michael  go  to  bed  immediately  after 
supper,  for  he  actually  sat  grandly  in  the  drawing-room, 
one  of  a  semicircle  round  the  autumnal  fire  of  logs  crackling 
and  leaping  with  blue  flames.  He  sat  silent,  listening  to  the 
pitter-pat  of  Mrs.  Carthew's  Patience  and  watching  the 
Halma  board  waiting  for  May  to  encounter  Joan,  while  in 
a  low  voice  Nancy  read  to  him  one  of  Fifty-two  Stories 
of  Adventure  for  Girls.  Bedtime  came  at  the  end  of  the 
story  and  Michael  was  sad  to  say  good-night  for  the  last 
time  and  sad  to  think,  when  he  got  into  his  ribboned  bed, 
that  to-morrow  night  he  would  be  in  Carlington  Road 
among  brass  knobs  and  Venetian  blinds  and  lamp-posts  and 
sounds  of  London.     Then  came  a  great  surprise  that  took 


THE    ENCHANTED    PALACE  93 

away  nearly  all  the  regrets  he  felt  at  leaving  Cobble  Place, 
for  Miss  Carthew  leaned  over  and  whispered  that  she  was 
coming  to  live  at  Sixty-four. 

"Oh!"  Michael  gasped.  "With  us— with  Stella  and 
me?" 

Miss  Carthew  nodded. 

"I  say!"  Michael  whispered.  "And  will  Stella  have 
lessons  when  I'm  going  to  school?" 

"Every  morning,"  said  Miss  Carthew. 

"I  expect  you'll  find  her  rather  bad  at  lessons,"  said 
Michael  doubtfully. 

He  was  almost  afraid  that  Miss  Carthew  might  leave  in 
despair  at  Stella's  ineptitude. 

"Lots  of  people  are  stupid  at  first,"  said  Miss  Carthew. 

Michael  blushed ;  he  remembered  a  certain  morning  when 
capes  and  promontories  got  inextricably  mixed  in  his  mind 
and  w^hen  Miss  Carthew  seemed  to  grow  quite  tired  of 
trying  to  explain  the  difference. 

"Will  you  teach  her  the  piano  now?"  he  inquired. 

"Oh  dear,  no.     I'm  not  clever  enough  to  do  that." 

"But  you  teach  me." 

"That's  dififerent.  Stella  will  be  a  great  pianist  one  day," 
said  Miss  Carthew  earnestly. 

"Will  she?"  asked  Michael  incredulously.  "But  I  don't 
like  her  to  play  a  bit — not  a  bit." 

"You  will  one  day.  Great  musicians  think  she  is  wonder- 
ful." 

Michael  gave  up  this  problem.  It  was  another  instance 
of  the  chasm  between  youth  and  age.  He  supposed  that 
one  day  he  would  like  Stella's  playing.  One  day,  so  he  had 
been  led  to  suppose,  he  would  also  like  fat  and  cabbage  and 
going  to  bed.  At  present  such  a  condition  of  mind  was 
incomprehensible.  However,  Stella  and  the  piano  mattered 
very  little  in  comparison  with  the  solid  fact  that  Miss 
Carthew  was  going  to  live  in  Carlington  Road. 


94  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

On  the  next  morning  before  they  left,  Michael  and  Mrs. 
Carthew  walked  round  the  garden  together,  while  Mrs. 
Carthew  talked  to  him  of  the  new  life  on  which  he  was 
shortly  going  to  enter. 

''Well,  Michael,"  she  said,  "in  a  week,  so  my  daughter 
tells  me,  you  will  be  going  to  school." 

"Yes,"  corroborated  Michael. 

"Dear  me,"  Mrs.  Carthew  went  on.  "I'm  glad  Fm  not 
going  to  school  for  the  first  time;  you  won't  like  it  at  all 
at  first,  and  then  you'll  like  it  very  much  indeed,  and  then 
you'll  either  go  on  liking  it  very  much  or  you'll  hate  it. 
If  you  go  on  liking — I  mean  when  you're  quite  old — 
sixteen  or  seventeen — you'll  never  do  anything,  but  if  you 
hate  it  then,  you'll  have  a  chance  of  doing  something. 
I'm  glad  my  daughter  Maud  is  going  to  look  after  you. 
She's  a  good  girl." 

Michael  thought  how  extraordinary  it  w^as  to  hear  Miss 
Carthew  spoken  of  in  this  manner  and  felt  shy  at  the 
prospect  of  having  to  agree  verbally  with  Mrs.  Carthew. 

"Take  my  advice — never  ask  questions.  Be  content  to 
make  a  fool  of  yourself  once  or  twice,  but  don't  ask  ques- 
tions. Don't  answer  questions  either.  That's  worse  than 
asking.  But,  after  all,  now  I'm  giving  advice,  and  worst  of 
anything  is  listening  to  other  people's  advice.  So  pick 
yourself  some  plums  and  get  ready,  for  the  chaise  will  soon 
be  at  the  door." 

Nurse  was  very  grumpy,  when  he  and  Miss  Carthew 
arrived.  She  did  not  seem  at  all  pleased  by  the  idea  of 
Miss  Carthew  living  in  the  house,  and  muttered  to  herself 
all  the  time.  Michael  did  no  more  lessons  in  the  week  that 
remained  before  the  autumn  term  began;  but  he  had  to  go 
with  Miss  Carthew  to  various  outfitters  and  try  on  coats 
and  suits  and  generally  be  equipped  for  school.  The  after- 
noons he  spent  in  Carlington  Road,  trying  to  pick  up  infor- 
mation about  St.  James'  Preparatory  School  from  the  boys 


THE   ENCHANTED   PALACE         95 

already  there.  One  of  these  boys  was  Rodber,  the  son  of 
a  doctor,  and  probably  by  his  manner  and  age  and  appearance 
the  most  important  boy  in  the  school.  At  any  rate  Michael 
found  it  difficult  to  believe  that  there  could  exist  a  boy  with 
more  right  to  rule  than  this  Rodber  with  his  haughty  eye 
and  Eton  suit  and  prominent  ears  and  quick  authoritative 
voice. 

"Look  here,"  said  Rodber  one  evening,  "can  you  borrow 
your  mail-cart?  I  saw  your  sister  being  wheeled  in  one 
this  morning.  We've  got  three  mail-carts  and  we  want  a 
fourth  for  trains." 

Michael  ran  as  fast  as  he  could  back  to  Sixty-four, 
rushed  down  the  area  steps,  rang  the  bell  half  a  dozen 
times  and  tapped  continuously  on  the  ground  glass  of  the 
back  door  until  Cook  opened  it. 

"Whatever's  the  matter?"  said  Cook. 

Michael  did  not  stop  to  answer,  but  ran  upstairs,  until 
breathless  he  reached  the  schoolroom. 

"Please,  Miss  Carthew,  may  we  have  Stella's  mail-cart? 
Rodber  wants  it — for  trains.  Do  let  me.  Rodber's  the 
boy  I  told  you  about  who's  at  school.  Oh,  do  let  us  have 
the  cart.  Rodber's  got  three,  but  he  wants  ours.  May  I, 
Miss  Carthew?" 

She  nodded. 

Michael  rushed  downstairs  in  a  helter-skelter  of  joy  and 
presently,  with  Cook's  assistance  in  getting  it  up  the  steps, 
Michael  stood  proudly  by  the  mail-cart  which  was  of  the 
dogcart  pattern,  very  light  and  swift  when  harnessed  to  a 
good  runner.     Rodber  examined  it  critically. 

"Yes,  that's  a  fairly  decent  one,"  he  decided. 

Michael  was  greatly  relieved  by  his  approval. 

"Look  here,"  said  Rodber,  "I  don't  mind  telling  you, 
as  you'll  be  a  new  kid,  one  or  two  tips  about  school.  Look 
here,  don't  tell  anybody  your  Christian  name  and  don't  be 
cocky." 


96  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Oh,  no,  I  won't,"  Michael  earnestly  promised. 

"And  don't,  for  goodness'  sake,  look  like  that  when  chaps 
speak  to  you,  or  you'll  get  your  head  smacked." 

This  w^as  the  sum  of  Rodber's  advice,  and  presently 
Michael  was  stationed  as  signalman  by  the  junction,  which 
w^as  a  pillar-box,  while  Rodber  went  off  at  express  speed, 
bound  for  the  next  station,  which  was  a  lamp-post.  A 
signalman's  life  on  the  Carlington  Road  line  was  a  lonely 
one,  and  it  was  also  a  very  tiring  one,  when  any  obstruction 
caused  the  signals  to  be  up.  Michael's  arm  ached  excru- 
ciatingly when  Rodber's  train  got  entangled  with  Garrod's 
train  and  Macalister's  train  had  to  be  kept  from  running 
into  them.  Moreover,  the  signalman's  life  had  none  of 
the  glories  of  controlling  other  people;  a  signalman  on  the 
Carlington  Road  line  was  dependent  on  the  train  for  his 
behavior.  He  was  not  allowed  to  interfere  with  the  free 
running  of  any  freight,  but  if  the  engine-driver  insisted, 
he  had  to  let  him  go  past,  and  if  there  was  an  accident  he 
was  blamed.  A  signalman's  life  was  lonely,  tiring,  humiliat- 
ing and  dangerous. 

These  few  fine  days  of  mid-September  went  quickly  by 
and  one  evening  Rodber  said  casually,  almost  cruelly  it 
seemed  to  Michael: 

"Well,  see  you  to-morrow  in  the  break,  young  Fane." 

Michael  wondered  what  on  earth  a  "break"  was;  he 
longed  to  ask  Rodber,  but  he  dared  not  display  at  the  very 
beginning  of  his  career  what  would  evidently  be  disgraceful 
ignorance,  and  so  he  said  that  he  would  see  Rodber  in  the 
"break"  to-morrow.  He  asked  Miss  Carthew  w^hen  he  got 
home  what  a  "break"  was,  and  she  told  him  it  was  a  large 
wagonette  sometimes  driven  by  four  horses.  Michael  was 
very  much  puzzled,  but  thought  school  would  be  fun  if  large 
wagonettes  were  commonplace  objects  of  school  life,  and 
dreamed  that  night  of  driving  furiously  with  Rodber  in 
a  gigantic  mail-cart  along  the  Hammersmith  Road. 


THE    ENCHANTED    PALACE         97 

At  breakfast  Miss  Carthew  asked  Michael  if  he  would 
like  her  to  come  with  him.  He  thought  for  a  moment,  and 
wished  that  Rodber  had  invited  him  to  accompany  him  that 
first  morning. 

"You  know,  it's  for  you  to  choose,  Michael,"  said  Miss 
Carthew. 

"Well,  I  would  like  you  to  come,"  said  Michael  at  last. 

So  at  ten  minutes  past  nine  they  set  out.  All  sorts  of 
boys  were  going  to  school  along  the  Hammersmith  Road, 
boys  of  every  size  carrying  satchels  or  bags  or  loose  bundles 
of  books.  Most  of  them  wore  the  Jacobean  cap,  and 
Michael  eyed  them  with  awe;  but  many  wore  the  cap  of 
St.  James'  Preparatory  School,  and  these  Michael  eyed  with 
curiosity  as  well  as  awe.  He  spoke  very  little  during  the 
walk  and  felt  all  the  way  a  sinking  of  the  heart.  When 
actually  he  reached  the  gate  of  Randell  House,  the  less 
formal  appellation  of  St.  James'  Preparatory  School,  he 
longed  to  turn  back  with  Miss  Carthew,  as  he  thought  with 
sentimental  pangs  of  the  pleasant  schoolroom  and  of  Stella 
sitting  by  Miss  Carthew,  learning  to  read  through  a  sunlit 
morning. 

"Don't  come  in  with  me,"  he  whispered. 

"Quite  right,"  said  Miss  Carthew  approvingly.  "Much 
better  without  me." 

"And  don't  wave,  will  you?"  he  begged.  Then  with 
an  effort  he  joined  the  stream  of  boys  walking  confidently 
through  the  big  gate. 

In  the  entrance  hall,  a  ginger-haired  foxy-faced  man  in 
a  green  uniform  said  sharply : 

"New  boy?" 

Michael  nodded. 

"Stand  on  one  side,  please.  Mr.  Randell  will  see  you 
presently." 

Michael  waited.  He  noticed  with  pride  that  the  boy 
next  to  him  had  brought  with  him  either  his  mother  or  his 


98  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

sister  or  his  governess.  Michael  felt  very  superior  and  was 
glad  he  had  resisted  the  temptation  to  ask  Miss  Carthew 
to  come  in  with  him.  He  noticed  how  curiously  the  other 
boys  eyed  this  lady  and  fancied  that  they  threw  contemp- 
tuous glances  at  the  boy  who  had  introduced  her.  Michael 
was  very  glad  indeed  that  he  had  let  Miss  Carthew  turn 
back. 


CHAPTER   VII 
YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

THE  preliminaries  of  Michael's  career  at  St.  James' 
Preparatory  School  passed  in  a  dream-like  confusion 
of  thought  and  action.  First  of  all  he  waited 
anxiously  in  the  Headmaster's  study  in  an  atmosphere  of 
morocco-leather  and  large  waste-paper  baskets.  Like  every 
other  room  in  which  Michael  had  waited,  whether  of  den- 
tist or  doctor,  the  outlook  from  the  window  was  gloomy 
and  the  prospect  within  was  depressing.  He  was  glad  when 
Mr.  Randell  led  him  and  several  other  boys  toward  the 
First  Form,  where  in  a  dream,  peopled  by  the  swinging 
legs  of  many  boys,  he  learnt  from  a  scarlet  book  that,  while 
Cornelia  loved  Julia,  Julia  returned  Cornelia's  affection. 
When  this  fact  was  established  in  both  English  and  Latin, 
all  the  boys  shuffled  to  their  desks  and  the  record  of  a  great 
affection  was  set  down  largely  and  painfully. 

1.  Cornelia  Juliam  amat. 

2.  Julia  Corneliam  amat. 

Blotted  and  smudged  and  sprawling  though  it  ultimately 
appeared,  Michael  felt  a  great  satisfaction  in  having  dealt 
successfully  with  two  nominatives,  two  accusatives  and  a 
verb.  The  first  part  of  the  morning  passed  away  quickly 
in  the  history  of  this  simple  love.  At  eleven  o'clock  a  shrill 
electric   bell    throbbed    through    the   school,    and    Michael, 

99 


100  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

almost  before  he  knew  what  was  happening,  was  carried 
in  a  torrent  of  boys  toward  the  playground.  Michael  had 
never  felt  supreme  loneliness,  even  at  night,  until  he  stood 
in  the  middle  of  that  green  prairie  of  recreation,  distinguish- 
ing nobody,  a  very  small  creature  in  a  throng  of  chattering 
giants.  Some  of  these  giants,  who  usually  walked  about 
arm  in  arm,  approached  him. 

"Hullo,  are  you  a  new  kid?" 

Michael  breathed  his  "yes." 

"What's  your  name?" 

With  an  effort  Michael  remembered  Rodber's  warning 
and  replied  simply: 

"Fane." 

"What's  your  Christian  name?" 

This  was  a  terribly  direct  attack,  and  Michael  was  won- 
dering whether  it  would  be  best  to  run  quickly  out  of  the 
playground,  to  keep  silence  or  to  surrender  the  information, 
when  the  quick  and  authoritative  voice  of  Rodber  flashed 
from  behind  him. 

"Fish  and  find  out,  young  Biden." 

"Who  are  you  calling  young,  young  Rodber?" 

"You,"  said  Rodber.  "So  you'd  jolly  well  better  scoot 
off  and  leave  this  kid  alone." 

"Church  said  I  was  to  collar  all  the  new  kids  for  his 
army,"  Biden  explained. 

"Did  he?  Well,  this  kid's  in  our  army,  so  sucks!  And 
you  can  tell  young  Church  that  Pearson  and  me  are  going 
to  jolly  well  lam  him  at  four  o'clock,"  announced  Rodber 
very  fiercely. 

"Why  don't  you  tell  him  yourself?"  asked  Biden  whose 
teeth  seemed  to  project  farther  and  farther  from  his  mouth, 
as  his  indignation  grew. 

"All  right,  Toothy  Biden,"  jeered  Rodber.  "We'll  tell 
the  whole  of  your  rotten  army  at  four  o'clock,  when  we 
give  you  the  biggest  lamming  you've  ever  had.     Come  on, 


YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER  loi 

young  Fane,"  he  went  on,  and  Michael,  somewhat  per- 
turbed by  the  prospect  of  being  involved  in  these  encounters, 
followed  at  his  heels. 

''Look  here,"  said  Rodber  presently,  "you'd  better  come 
and  show  yourself  to  Pearson.  He's  the  captain  of  our 
army;  and  for  goodness'  sake  look  a  bit  cheerful." 

Michael  forced  an  uncomfortable  grin  such  as  photog- 
raphers conjure. 

Under  the  shade  of  a  gigantic  tree  stood  Pearson  the 
leader,  languidly  eating  a  very  small  and  very  unripe  pear. 

"Hullo,  Pinky,"  he  drawled. 

"I  say,  Pearson,"  said  Rodber  in  a  reverent  voice,  "I 
know  this  kid  at  home.  He's  awfully  keen  to  be  allowed  to 
join  your  army." 

Pearson  scarcely  glanced  at  Michael. 

"All  right.  Swear  him  in.  I've  got  a  new  oath  written 
down  in  a  book  at  home,  but  he  can  take  the  old  one." 

Pearson  yawned  and  threw  away  the  core  of  the  pear. 

"He's  awfully  glad  he's  going  to  join  your  army,  Pearson. 
Aren't  you,  young  Fane?" 

"Yes,  awfully  glad,"  Michael  echoed. 

"It's  the  best  army,"  said  Pearson  simply. 

"Oh,  easily,"  Rodber  agreed.  "I  say,  Pearson,  that  kid 
Biden  said  Church  was  going  to  lam  you  at  four  o'clock." 

The  offended  Pearson  swallowed  a  large  piece  of  a  second 
unripe  pear  and  scowled. 

"Did  he?  Tell  the  army  to  line  up  behind  the  lav  at 
four  o'clock." 

Rodber's  eyes  gleamed. 

"I  say,  Pearson,  I've  got  an  awfully  ripping  plan.  Sup- 
posing we  ambush  them." 

"How?"  inquired  the  commander. 

"Why,  supposing  w^e  put  young  Fane  and  two  or  three 
more  new  kids  by  the  tuckshop  door  and  tell  them  to  run 


102  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 


toward  the  haunted  house,  we  could  cop  them  simply 
rippingly." 

"Give  the  orders  before  afternoon  school,"  said  Pearson 
curtly,  and  just  then  the  bell  for  ''second  hour"  sounded. 

*'Wait  for  me  at  half -past  twelve,"  Rodber  shouted  to 
Michael  as  he  ran  to  get  into  school. 

Michael  grew  quite  feverish  during  "second  hour"  and 
his  brain  whirled  with  the  imagination  of  battles,  so  that 
the  landing  of  Julius  Caesar  seemed  of  minor  importance. 
Tuckshops  and  haunted  houses  and  doors  and  ambushes 
and  the  languid  pale-faced  Pearson  occupied  his  thoughts 
fully  enough.  At  a  quarter  past  twelve  Mr.  Whichelo  the 
First  Form  master  told  Michael  and  the  other  new  boys 
to  go  to  the  book-room  and  get  their  school  caps,  and  at 
half-past  twelve  Michael  waited  outside  on  the  yellow  gravel 
for  Rodber,  splendidly  proud  of  himself  in  a  blue  cap 
crested  with  a  cockleshell  worked  in  silver  wire.  He  was 
longing  to  look  at  himself  in  the  glass  at  home  and  to  show 
Miss  Carthew  and  Stella  and  Nanny  and  Cook  and  Gladys 
his  school  cap. 

However,  before  he  could  go  home  Rodber  took  him  round 
to  where  the  tuckshop  ambush  would  ensue  at  four  o'clock. 
He  showed  him  a  door  in  a  wall  which  led  apparently  into 
the  narrow  shady  garden  of  an  empty  house  next  to  the 
school.  He  explained  how  Michael  was  to  hang  about 
outside  this  door  and  when  the  Churchites  demanded  his 
presence,  he  told  him  that  he  was  to  run  as  hard  as  he  could 
down  the  garden  toward  the  house. 

"We'll  do  the  rest,"  said  Rodber.  "And  now  cut  off 
home." 

As  soon  as  Michael  was  inside  Number  64,  he  rushed 
upstairs  to  his  bedroom  and  examined  himself  critically 
in  the  looking-glass.  Really  the  new  cap  made  a  great 
difference.  He  seemed  older  somehow  and  more  important. 
He  wished  that  his  arms  and  legs  were  not  so  thin,  and  he 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER  103 

looked  forward  to  the  time  when  like  Rodber  he  would 
wear  Etons.  However,  his  hair  was  now  pleasantly  and 
inconspicuously  straight;  he  had  already  seen  boys  woefully 
teased  on  account  of  their  curls,  and  Michael  congratulated 
himself  that  generally  his  dress  and  appearance  conformed 
with  the  fashion  of  the  younger  boys'  dress  at  Randell's. 
It  would  be  terrible  to  excite  notice.  In  fact,  Michael 
supposed  that  to  excite  notice  was  the  worst  sin  anybody 
could  possibly  commit.  He  hoped  he  would  never  excite 
notice.  He  w^ould  like  to  remain  perfectly  ordinary,  and 
very  slowly  by  an  inconspicuous  and  gradual  growth  he 
would  thus  arrive  in  time  at  the  dignity  and  honor  enjoyed 
by  Rodber,  and  perhaps  even  to  the  sacred  majesty  that 
clung  to  Pearson.  Already  he  was  going  to  take  an  active 
part  in  the  adventures  of  school;  and  he  felt  sorry  for  the 
boys  who  without  Rodber's  influence  would  mildly  go 
straight  home  at  four  o'clock. 

Indeed,  Michael  set  out  to  afternoon  school  in  a  somewhat 
elated  frame  of  mind,  and  when  he  turned  into  the  school- 
yard, wearing  the  school  cap,  he  felt  bold  enough  to  watch 
a  game  of  Conquerors  that  was  proceeding  between  two 
solemn-faced  boys.  He  thought  that  to  try  to  crack  a 
chestnut  hanging  on  a  piece  of  string  with  another  chest- 
nut similarly  suspended  was  a  very  enthralling  pastime, 
and  he  was  much  upset  when  one  of  the  solemn-faced 
antagonists  suddenly  grabbed  his  new  school-cap  and  put 
it  in  his  pocket  and,  without  paying  any  attention  to  Michael, 
went  on  with  the  game  as  if  nothing  had  happened.  Michael 
had  no  idea  how  to  grapple  with  the  situation  and  felt 
inclined  to  cry. 

"I  say,  give  me  my  cap,"  he  said  at  last. 

The  solemn-faced  boys  went  on  in  silence  with  the  game. 

"I  say,  please  give  me  my  cap,"  Michael  asked  again. 

No  notice  was  taken  of  his  appeal  and  Michael,  looking 
round  in  despair,  saw  Rodber.     He  ran  up  to  him. 


'104  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"I  say,  Rodber,  that  boy  over  there  has  got  my  cap," 
he  said. 

''Well,  don't  come  sneaking  to  me,  you  young  ass.  Go 
and  smack  his  head." 

"Am  I  to  really?"  asked  Michael. 

"Of  course." 

Michael  was  not  prepared  to  withstand  Rodber's  advice, 
so  he  went  up  to  the  solemn-faced  boy  and  hit  him  as  hard 
as  he  could.  The  solemn-faced  boy  was  so  much  surprised 
by  this  attack  that  he  did  not  for  a  moment  retaliate,  and 
it  was  only  his  friend's  gasp  "I  say,  what  fearful  cheek," 
that  restored  him  to  a  sense  of  what  had  happened. 

In  a  moment  Michael  found  himself  lying  on  his  back 
and  almost  smothered  by  the  solemn-faced  boy's  whole 
body  and  presently  suffering  agony  from  the  pressure  of 
the  solemn-faced  boy's  knees  upon  his  arms  pinioned  cross- 
wise. Excited  voices  chattered  about  him  from  an  increasing 
circle.  He  heard  the  solemn-faced  boy  telling  his  horrified 
auditors  that  a  new  kid  had  smacked  his  head.  He  heard 
various  punishments  strongly  recommended,  and  at  last 
with  a  sense  of  relief  he  heard  the  quick  authoritative  voice 
of  the  ubiquitous  Rodber. 

"Let  him  get  up,  young  Plummer.     A  fight!     A  fight!" 

Plummer  got  up,  as  he  was  told,  and  Michael  in  a  circle 
of  eager  faces  found  himself  confronted  by  Plummer. 

"Go  on,"  shouted  Rodber.  "I'm  backing  you,  young 
Fane." 

Michael  lowered  his  head  and  charged  desperately  for- 
ward for  the  honor  of  Rodber;  but  a  terrible  pain  in  his 
nose  and  another  in  his  arm  and  a  third  in  his  chin  brought 
tears  and  blood  together  in  such  quantity  that  Michael 
would  have  liked  to  throw  himself  onto  the  grass  and  weep 
his  life  out,  too  weak  to  contend  with  solemn-faced  boys 
who  snatched  caps. 

Then   over   his   misery   he   heard    Rodber    cry,    "That's 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER  lo; 

enough.  It's  not  fair.  Give  him  back  his  cap."  The  crowd 
broke  up  except  for  a  few  admirers  of  Rodber,  who  was 
telling  Michael  that  he  had  done  tolerably  well  for  a  new 
kid.  Michael  felt  encouraged  and  ventured  to  point  out 
that  he  had  not  really  blabbed. 

"You  cocky  young  ass,"  said  Rodber  crushingly.  "I  sup- 
pose you  mean  'blubbed.'  " 

Michael  was  overwhelmed  by  this  rebuke  and,  wishing 
to  hide  his  shame  in  a  far  corner  of  the  field,  turned  away. 
But  Rodber  called  him  back  and  spoke  pleasantly,  so  that 
Michael  forgot  the  snub  and  wandered  for  the  rest  of  the 
dinner-hour  in  Rodber's  wake,  with  aching  nose,  but  with 
a  heart  beating  in  admiration  and  affection. 

Within  a  fortnight  Michael  had  become  a  schoolboy, 
sharing  in  the  general  ambitions  and  factions  and  preju- 
dices and  ideals  of  schoolboyhood.  He  was  a  member  of 
Pearson's  victorious  army;  he  supported  the  London  Road 
Car  Company  against  the  London  General  Omnibus  Com- 
pany, the  District  Railway  against  the  Metropolitan  Rail- 
way ;  he  was  always  ready  to  lam  young  boarders  who  were 
cheeky,  and  when  an  older  boarder  called  him  a  "day-bug" 
Michael  was  discreetly  silent,  merely  registering  a  vow 
to  take  it  out  of  the  young  boarders  at  the  first  opportunity. 
He  also  learnt  to  speak  without  blushing  of  the  gym  and 
the  lav  and  arith  and  hols  and  "Bobbie"  Randell  and 
"my  people"  and  "my  kiddy  sister."  He  was  often  first 
with  the  claimant  "ego"  when  someone  shouted  "quis?" 
over  a  broken  pocket-knife  found.  He  could  shout  "fain 
I"  to  be  rid  of  an  obligation  and  "bags  I"  to  secure  an 
advantage.  He  was  a  rigid  upholder  of  the  inviolableness 
of  Christian  names  as  postulated  by  Randellite  convention. 
He  laid  out  threepence  a  week  in  the  purchase  of  sweets 
usually  at  four  ounces  a  penny;  while  during  the  beggary 
that  succeeded  he  was  one  of  the  most  persistent  criers  of 
"donnez,"  when  richer  boys  emerged  from  the  tuckshop, 
8 


io6  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

sucking  gelatines  and  satin  pralines  and  chocolate  creams 
and  raspberry  noyau.  As  for  the  masters,  he  was  always 
ready  to  hear  scandalous  rumors  about  their  unofficial  lives, 
and  he  was  one  of  the  first  to  fly  round  the  playground 
with  the  news  that  "Squeaky'*  Mordaunt  had  distinctly 
muttered  "damn"  beneath  his  breath,  when  Featherstone 
Minor  trod  on  his  toe  toward  the  close  of  first  hour.  Soon 
also  with  one  of  the  four  hundred  odd  boys  who  made 
up  the  population  of  this  very  large  private  school  Michael 
formed  a  great  friendship.  He  and  Buckley  were  inseparable 
for  sixteen  whole  weeks.  During  that  time  they  exchanged 
the  most  intimate  confidences.  Buckley  told  Michael  that 
his  Christian  names  were  Claude  Arnold  Eustace,  and 
Michael  told  Buckley  that  he  was  called  Charles  Michael 
Saxby,  and  also  that  his  mother  was  generally  away  from 
home,  that  his  father  was  dead,  that  his  governess  was 
called  Miss  Carthew,  that  he  had  a  sister  who  played  the 
piano  and  that  one  day  when  he  grew  up  he  hoped  to  be 
an  explorer  and  search  for  orchids  in  Borneo.  Sometimes 
on  Saturday  or  Wednesday  half-holidays  Buckley  came 
to  tea  with  Michael  and  sometimes  Michael  went  to  tea 
with  Buckley,  and  observed  how  well  Buckley  kept  in  order 
his  young  brothers  and  kiddy  sisters.  Buckley  lived  close 
to  Kensington  Gardens  and  rode  to  school  every  morning 
on  a  London  Road  Car,  which  was  the  reason  of  Michael's 
keen  partisanship  of  that  company.  In  the  eleven  o'clock 
break  between  first  and  second  hours,  Michael  and  Buckley 
walked  arm  in  arm  round  the  field,  and  in  the  dinner-hour 
Michael  and  Buckley  shared  a  rope  on  the  Giant  Stride 
and  talked  intimately  on  the  top  of  the  horizontal  ladder 
in  the  outdoor  gymnasium.  During  the  Christmas  holidays 
they  haunted  the  banks  of  the  Round  Pond  and  fished 
for  minnows  and  sailed  capsizable  yachts  and  cheeked 
keepers.  Every  night  Michael  thought  of  Buckley  and  every 
night  Michael  hoped  that  Buckley  thought  of  him.     Even 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER  107 


in  scholarship  they  were  scarcely  distinguishable;  for  when 
at  the  end  of  the  autumn  term  Michael  was  top  of  the 
class  in  Divinity  and  English,  Buckley  headed  the  Latin 
list.  As  for  Drawing  they  were  bracketed  equal  at  the  very 
bottom  of  the  form. 

Then,  toward  the  middle  of  the  Lent  term,  Randell 
House  was  divided  against  itself;  for  one  half  of  the  school 
became  Oxford  and  the  other  half  Cambridge,  in  celebra- 
tion of  the  boat-race  which  would  be  rowed  at  the  end  of 
March.  When  one  morning  Michael  saw  Buckley  coming 
into  school  with  a  light  blue  swallow  pinned  to  the  left 
of  his  sailor-knot  and  when  Buckley  perceived  attached  to 
Michael's  sailor-top  a  medal  dependent  from  a  dark  blue 
ribbon,  they  eyed  each  other  as  strangers.  This  difference 
of  opinion  was  irremediable.  Neither  romance  nor  senti- 
ment could  ever  restore  to  Michael  and  Buckley  their 
pristine  cordiality,  because  Michael  was  now  a  despised 
Oxtail  and  Buckley  was  a  loathed  Cabbage-stalk. 

They  shouted  to  one  another  from  the  heart  of  massed 
factions  mocking  rhymes.     Michael  would  chant: 

"Oxford  upstairs  eating  all  the  cakes; 
Cambridge  downstairs  licking  up  the  plates." 

To  which  Buckley  would  retort: 

"Cambridge,  rowing  on  and  on  forever; 
Oxford  in  a  matchbox  floating  down  the  river." 

Snow  fell  in  February,  and  great  snow-ball  fights  took 
place  between  the  Oxtails  and  the  Cabbage-stalks  in  which 
the  fortunes  of  both  sides  varied  from  day  to  day.  During 
one  of  these  fights  Michael  hit  Buckley  full  in  the  eye 
with  a  snow-ball  alleged  to  contain  a  stone,  and  the  bitter- 
ness between  them  grew  sharper.  Then  Oxford  won  the 
boat-race,    and    Buckley    cut    Michael    publicly.      Finally, 


io8  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

owning  to  some  alteration  in  the  Buckley  home,  Buckley 
became  a  boarder,  and  was  able  with  sneering  voice  to  call 
Michael  a  beastly  *'day-bug."  Such  was  the  friendship  of 
Michael  and  Buckley,  which  lasted  for  sixteen  weeks  and 
might  not  indeed  have  so  much  wounded  Michael,  when  the 
rupture  was  made  final,  if  Buckley  had  proved  loyal  to  that 
friendship.  Unfortunately  for  Michael's  belief  in  human 
nature  Buckley  one  day,  stung  perhaps  by  some  trifling 
advantage  gained  by  day-boys  at  the  expense  of  boarders, 
divulged  Michael's  Christian  names.  He  called  out  dis- 
tinctly, "Ha!  ha!  Charles  Michael  Saxby  Fane!  Oh, 
what  a  name!     Kiddy  Michael  Sacks-of-coals  Fane!" 

Michael  regretted  his  intimacy  with  one  who  was  not 
within  the  circle  of  Carlington  Road.  In  future,  he  would 
not  seek  friends  outside  Carlington  Road  and  the  six  roads 
of  the  alliance.  There  all  secrets  must  be  kept,  and  all 
quarrels  locally  adjusted,  for  there  Christian  names  were 
known  and  every  household  had  its  skeleton  of  nurse  or 
governess. 

Meanwhile,  Mrs.  Fane  did  not  come  home  and  Miss 
Carthew  assumed  more  and  more  complete  control  of 
Number  64,  until,  one  day  in  spring.  Nurse  suddenly  told 
Michael  that  she  was  leaving  next  day.  Somehow,  Nurse 
had  ceased  to  influence  Michael's  life  one  way  or  the  other 
and  he  could  only  feel  vaguely  uncomfortable  over  her 
departure.  Nurse  cried  a  good  deal  particularly  at  saying 
good-bye  to  Stella,  whom  she  called  her  own  girl  whatever 
anybody  might  say.  When  Michael  perceived  Nurse's 
tears,  he  tried  hard  to  drag  up  from  the  depths  of  his  nature 
a  dutiful  sentimentality.  For  the  last  time  he  kissed  that 
puckered  monkey-like  face,  and  in  a  four-wheeler  Nurse 
vanished  w^ithout  making  any  difference  in  the  life  of  Sixty- 
four,  save  by  a  convenient  shifting  about  of  the  upstairs 
rooms.  The  old  night-nursery  was  redecorated  and  became 
for  many  years  Michael's  bedroom.     Miss  Carthew  slept  in 


YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER  109 

Michael's  old  big  lonely  front  room,  and  Stella  slept  in  a 
little  dressing-room  opening  out  of  it.  Down  in  the  kitchen, 
whence  withered  Gladys  and  the  impersonal  cook  had  also 
vanished,  Michael  gleaned  a  certain  amount  of  gossip  and 
found  that  the  immediate  cause  of  Nurse's  departure  was 
due  to  Miss  Carthew's  discovery  of  her  dead  drunk  in  a 
kitchen  chair.  It  seemed  that  Miss  Carthew,  slim  and  strong 
and  beautiful,  had  had  to  carry  the  old  woman  up  to  her 
bedroom,  while  Michael  lay  sleeping,  had  had  to  undress 
and  put  her  to  bed  and  on  the  next  day  to  contend  with  her 
asseverations  that  the  collapse  was  due  to  violent  neuralgia. 
It  seemed  also  that  for  years  the  neighborhood  had  known 
of  Nurse's  habits,  had  even  seen  her  on  two  occasions  upset 
Stella's  perambulator.  Indeed,  so  far  as  Michael  could 
gather,  he  and  Stella  had  lived  until  Miss  Carthew's  arrival 
in  a  state  of  considerable  insecurity. 

However,  Nurse  w^as  now  a  goblin  of  the  past,  and  the 
past  could  be  easily  forgotten.  In  these  golden  evenings  of 
the  summer-term,  there  was  too  much  going  forward  in 
Carlington  Road  to  let  old  glooms  overshadow  the  gaiety 
of  present  life.  As  Mrs.  Carthew  had  prophesied,  Michael 
enjoyed  being  at  school  very  much,  and  having  already 
won  a  prize  for  being  top  of  his  class  in  Divinity  and  Eng- 
lish at  Christmas,  with  every  prospect  of  being  top  of  his  class 
again  in  the  summer,  he  was  anxious  to  achieve  the  still 
greater  distinction  of  winning  a  prize  in  the  school  sports 
which  were  to  be  held  in  July.  All  the  boys  who  lived  in 
the  Carlington  Confederate  Roads  determined  to  win 
prizes,  and  Rodber  was  very  much  to  the  fore  in  training 
them  all  to  do  him  credit.  It  was  the  fashion  to  choose 
colors  in  which  to  run,  and  Michael  after  a  week's  debate 
elected  to  appear  in  violet  running-drawers  and  primrose- 
bordered  vest.  The  twin  Macalisters,  contemporaries  of 
Michael,  ran  in  cerise  and  eau-de-nil,  while  the  older 
Macalister  wore  ultramarine   and   mauve.      Garrod   chose 


no  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

dark  green  and  Rodber  looked  dangerously  swift  in  black 
and  yellow.  Every  evening  there  was  steady  practice  under 
Rodber,  either  in  canvas  shoes  from  lamp-post  to  lamp- 
post or,  during  the  actual  week  before  the  sports,  in  spiked 
running-shoes  on  the  grass-track,  with  corks  to  grip  and 
a  temperamental  stop-watch  to  cause  many  disputes. 
It  was  a  great  humiliation  for  the  Confederate  Roads 
when  Rodber  himself  failed  to  last  the  half-mile  (under 
14)  on  the  day  itself.  However,  the  Macalister  twins  won 
the  sack  race  (under  11)  and  in  the  same  class  Michael  won 
the  hundred  yards  Consolation  Race  and  an  octagonal 
napkin-ring,  so  Carlington  Road  congratulated  itself.  In 
addition  to  athletic  practice,  there  were  several  good  fights 
with  "cads"  and  a  disagreeable  Colonel  had  his  dining-room 
window  starred  by  a  catapult.  Other  notable  events  in- 
cluded a  gas  explosion  at  Number  78,  when  the  front  door 
was  blown  across  the  street  and  flattened  a  passer-by  against 
the  opposite  wall.  There  was  a  burglary  at  Number  33 
and  the  housemaid  at  Number  56  fell  backward  from  the 
dining-room  w^indow-sill  and  bruised  her  back  on  the  lid 
of  the  dustbin  in  the  area. 

With  all  these  excitements  to  sustain  the  joy  of  life 
Michael  was  very  happy  and,  when  school  broke  up  for  the 
summer  holidays,  he  had  never  yet  looked  forward  so  eagerly 
to  the  jolly  weeks  by  the  sea.  Miss  Carthew  and  Michael 
and  Stella  went  to  Folkestone  that  year,  and  Michael  en- 
joyed himself  enormously.  Miss  Carthew,  provided  that  she 
was  allowed  a  prior  inspection,  offered  no  opposition  to 
friendship  with  strange  children,  and  Michael  joined  an 
association  for  asking  everybody  on  the  Leas  w^hat  the  time 
was.  The  association  would  not  have  been  disbanded  all  the 
holidays,  if  one  of  the  members  had  not  asked  the  time 
from  the  same  old  gentleman  twice  in  one  minute.  The  old 
gentleman  was  so  acutely  irritated  by  this  that  he  w^alked 
about  the  Leas  warning  people  against  the  association,  until 


YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER  in 

it  became  impossible  to  find  out  the  time,  when  one  really 
wanted  to  know.  Michael  moved  inland  for  a  while  after 
this  and  fell  into  Radnor  Park  pond,  when  he  returned  to 
the  sea  and  got  stung  by  a  jelly-fish  while  he  was  paddling, 
and  read  Treasure  Island  in  the  depths  of  his  own  par- 
ticular cave  among  the  tamarisks  of  the  lower  Sandgate 
Road. 

After  about  a  fortnight  of  complete  rest,  a  slight  cloud 
was  cast  over  the  future  by  the  announcement  at  breakfast 
one  morning  that  he  was  to  do  a  couple  of  hours'  work  at 
French  every  day  with  a  French  governess;  remembering 
Madame  Flauve,  he  felt  depressed  by  the  prospect.  But 
Miss  Carthew  found  a  charming  and  youthful  French 
governess  at  a  girls'  school,  where  about  half  a  dozen  girls 
were  remaining  during  the  holidays,  and  Michael  did  not 
mind  so  much.  He  rather  liked  the  atmosphere  of  the  girls* 
school,  although  when  he  returned  to  Randell's  he  gave  a 
very  contemptuous  account  of  female  education  to  his  mas- 
culine peers.  An  incident  happened  at  this  girls'  school, 
which  he  never  told,  although  it  made  a  great  impression 
on  his  imagination. 

One  afternoon,  he  had  been  invited  to  take  tea  with  the 
six  girls  and  Mademoiselle,  and  after  tea,  the  weather  being 
wet,  they  all  played  games  in  the  recreation-room.  One  of 
the  smaller  girls  happened  to  swing  higher  than  decorum 
allowed,  and  caused  Michael  to  blush  and  to  turn  his  head 
quickly  and  look  intently  at  houses  opposite.  He  knew 
that  the  girl  was  unaware  of  the  scandal  she  had  created,, 
and  therefore  blushed  the  deeper  and  hoped  that  the  matter 
would  pass  off  quietly.  But  very  soon  he  heard  a  chatter  of 
reproof,  and  the  poor  little  girl  was  banished  from  the  room 
in  disgrace,  while  all  the  other  girls  discussed  the  shameful 
business  from  every  point  of  view,  calling  upon  Mademoiselle 
and  Michael  to  endorse  their  censure.  Michael  felt  very 
sorry  for  the  poor  little  girl  and  wished  very  much  that  the 


112  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

others  would  let  the  matter  drop,  but  the  discussion  went 
on  endlessly  and  as,  just  before  he  went  home,  he  happened 
to  see  the  offending  girl  sitting  by  a  window  w^ith  tear- 
stained  face,  Michael  felt  more  sorry  than  ever  and  wished 
that  he  dared  to  say  a  comforting  word,  to  explain  how  well 
he  understood  it  was  all  an  accident.  On  the  way  home, 
he  walked  silently,  meditating  upon  disgrace,  and  for  the 
first  time  he  realized  something  of  human  cruelty  and  the 
lust  to  humiliate  and  submerge  deeper  still  the  fallen. 
At  the  same  time  he  himself  experienced,  in  retrospect  of 
the  incident,  a  certain  curious  excitement,  and  did  not  know 
whether,  after  all,  he  had  not  taken  pleasure  in  the  little 
girl's  shame,  whether,  after  all,  he  would  not  have  liked  to 
go  back  and  talk  the  whole  matter  out  again.  However, 
there  was  that  exciting  chapter  in  Treasure  Island  to  finish 
and  the  September  Boy's  Own  Paper  to  expect.  On  the 
next  day  Michael,  walking  with  Miss  Carthew  on  the  Leas, 
met  General  Mace,  and  girls'  schools  with  their  curious 
excitements  and  blushes  were  entirely  forgotten.  General 
Mace,  it  appeared,  was  an  old  friend  of  Miss  Carthew's 
father  and  was  staying  by  himself  at  Folkestone.  General 
Mace  had  fought  in  the  Indian  Mutiny  and  was  exactly 
what  a  general  should  be,  very  tall  with  a  white  mustache 
fiercely  curling  and  a  rigid  back  that  bent  inward  like  a  bow 
and  a  magnificent  ebony  walking-stick  and  a  gruff  voice. 
General  Mace  seemed  to  take  a  fancy  to  Michael  and  act- 
ually invited  him  to  go  for  a  walk  with  him  next  day  at 
ten  o'clock. 

"Sharp,  mind,"  said  the  General  as  he  saluted  stiffly. 
*Ten  o'clock  to  the  minute." 

Michael  spent  the  rest  of  the  day  in  asking  questions 
of  Miss  Carthew  about  General  Mace,  and  scarcely  slept 
that  night  for  fear  he  might  be  late.  At  nine  o'clock, 
Michael  set  out  for  the  lodgings  and  ran  all  the  way  to  the 
General's  house  on  the  Leas  and  walked  about  and  fidgeted 


YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER  113 


and  fretted  himself,  until  the  clock  struck  the  first  chime  of 
ten,  when  he  rang  the  bell  and  was  shown  upstairs  and  was 
standing  on  the  General's  hearthrug  before  the  echo  of  the 
last  chime  had  died  away. 

The  General  cleared  his  throat  and,  after  saluting  Michael, 
suggested  a  walk.  Proudly  Michael  walked  beside  this 
tall  old  soldier  up  and  down  the  Leas.  He  was  told  tales 
of  the  Mutiny;  he  learned  the  various  ranks  of  the  British 
Army  from  Lance-corporal  to  Field-marshal;  he  agreed  at 
the  General's  suggestion  to  aim  at  a  commission  in  the 
Bengal  Cavalry,  preferably  in  a  regiment  which  wore  a 
uniform  of  canary-yellow.  Every  morning  Michael  walked 
about  Folkestone  with  General  Mace,  and  one  morning 
they  turned  into  a  toy-shop  where  Michael  was  told  to 
choose  two  boxes  of  soldiers.  Michael  at  first  chose  a  box 
of  Highlanders  doubling  fiercely  with  fixed  bayonets  and  a 
stationary  Highland  Regimental  Band,  each  individual 
of  which  had  a  different  instrument  and  actually  a  music- 
stand  as  well.  These  two  boxes  together  cost  seven  shillings, 
and  Michael  was  just  leaving  the  shop,  w^hen  he  saw  a  small 
penny  box  containing  twelve  very  tiny  soldiers.  Michael 
was  in  a  quandary.  For  several  shillings,  he  would  be  able 
to  buy  eighty-four  penny  boxes,  that  is  to  say  one  thousand 
and  eight  soldiers,  whereas  in  the  two  boxes  of  Highlanders 
already  selected  there  were  only  twelve  with  bayonets,  twelve 
with  instruments  and  twelve  music-stands.  It  was  really 
very  difficult  to  decide,  and  General  Mace  declined  to  make 
any  suggestion  as  to  which  w^ould  be  the  wiser  choice. 
Michael  was  racked  by  indecision  and  after  a  long  debate 
chose  the  original  two  boxes  and  played  with  his  Highland- 
ers for  several  years  to  come. 

"Quite  right,"  said  the  General  when  they  reached  the 
sunlight  from  the  dusty  little  toy-shop.  "Quite  right. 
Quality  before  quantity,  sir.  I'm  glad  to  see  you  have  so 
much  common  sense." 


114  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Almost  before  the  holidays  seemed  to  have  begun,  the 
holidays  were  over.  There  was  a  short  .and  melancholy 
day  of  packing  up,  and  a  farewell  visit  through  the  rain  to 
General  Mace.  He  and  Michael  sat  for  a  while  in  his  room, 
while  they  talked  earnestly  of  the  Indian  Army  and  the 
glories  of  patriotism.  Michael  told  tales,  slightly  exag- 
gerated, of  the  exploits  of  Pearson's  army  and  General 
Mace  described  the  Relief  of  Lucknow.  Michael  felt  that 
they  were  in  profound  sympathy;  they  both  recognized  the 
splendor  of  action.  The  rain  stopped,  and  in  a  rich 
autumnal  sunset  they  walked  together  for  the  last  time  over 
the  golden  puddles  and  spangled  wetness  of  the  Leas. 
Michael  went  through  the  ranks  of  the  British  Army 
without  a  single  mistake,  and  promised  faithfully  to  make 
the  Bengal  Lancers  his  aim  through  youth. 

"Punctuality,  obedience  and  quality  before  quantity,"  said 
the  General,  standing  up  as  tall  and  thin  as  Don  Quixote 
against  the  sunset  glow.     "Good-bye." 

"Good-bye,"  said  Michael. 

They  saluted  each  other  ceremoniously,  and  parted. 
The  next  day  Michael  was  in  London,  and,  after  a  depress- 
ing Sunday  and  an  exciting  Monday  spent  in  buying  a 
Norfolk  suit  and  Eton  collars,  the  new  term  began  with  all 
the  excitements  of  "moving  up,"  of  a  new  form-master,  of 
new  boys,  of  seeing  who  would  be  in  the  Football  Eleven  and 
of  looking  forward  to  Christmas  with  its  presents  and  pan- 
tomimes. 


CHAPTER   VIII 
MORE    ENCOUNTERS 

IN  the  Upper  Fourth  class,  under  the  tutorship  of 
Mr.  Macrae,  Michael  began  to  prosecute  seriously 
the  study  of  Greek,  whose  alphabet  he  had  learnt 
the  preceding  term.  He  now  abandoned  the  scarlet 
book  of  Elementary  Latin  for  Henry's  Latin  Primer, 
which  began  with  "Balbus  was  building  a  wall,"  and  looked 
difficult  in  its  mulberry-cloth  binding.  This  term  in  the 
Upper  Fourth  was  very  trying  to  Michael.  Troubles 
accumulated.  Coincident  with  the  appearance  of  Greek 
irregular  verbs  came  the  appearance  of  Avery,  a  new  boy 
who  at  once,  new  boy  though  he  was,  assumed  command 
of  the  Upper  Fourth  and  made  Michael  the  target  for  his 
volatile  and  stinging  shafts.  Misfortune,  having  once  di- 
rected her  attention  to  Michael,  pursued  him  for  some  time 
to  come.  Michael  was  already  sufficiently  in  awe  of  Avery's 
talent  for  hurting  his  feelings,  when  from  the  Hebrides 
Mrs.  Fane  sent  down  Harris  tweed  for  Michael's  Norfolk 
suits.  He  begged  Miss  Carthew  to  let  him  continue  in 
the  inconspicuous  dark  blue  serge  which  was  the  fashion 
at  Randell's;  but  for  once  she  was  unsympathetic,  and 
Michael  had  to  wear  the  tweed.  Avery,  of  course,  was  very 
witty  at  his  expense  and  for  a  long  time  Michael  was  known 
as  "strawberry-bags,"  until  the  joke  palled.  Michael  had 
barely  lived  down  the  Harris  tweed,  when  Avery  discovered, 
while  they  were  changing  into  football  shorts,  that  Michael 

115 


ii6  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

wore  combinations  instead  of  pants  and  vest.  Combinations 
were  held  to  be  the  depth  of  effeminacy,  and  Avery  often 
inquired  w^hen  Michael  was  going  to  appear  in  petticoats 
and  stays.  Michael  spoke  to  Miss  Carthew  about  these 
combinations  which  at  the  very  moment  of  purchase  he  had 
feared,  but  Miss  Carthew  insisted  that  they  were  much 
healthier  than  the  modish  pants  and  vest,  and  Michael 
was  not  allowed  to  change  the  style  of  his  underclothing. 
In  desperation  he  tied  some  tape  round  his  waist,  but  the 
observant  Avery  noticed  this  ruse,  and  Michael  was  more 
cruelly  teased  than  ever.  Then  one  Monday  morning, 
the  worst  blow  of  all  fell  suddenly.  The  boys  at  Randell's 
had  on  Saturday  morning  to  take  down  from  dictation  the 
form-list  in  a  home-book,  which  had  to  be  brought  back  on 
Monday  morning  signed  by  a  parent,  so  that  no  boy  should 
escape  the  vigilance  of  the  paternal  eye.  Of  course,  Miss 
Carthew  always  signed  Michael's  home-book  and  so  far  no 
master  had  asked  any  questions.  But  Mr.  Macrae  said  quite 
loudly  on   this  Monday  morning: 

*'Who  is  this  Maud  Carthew  that  signs  your  book,  Fane?" 

Michael  felt  the  pricking  of  the  form's  ears  and  blushed 
hotly. 

"My  mother's  away,"  he  stammered. 

"Oh,"  said  Mr.  Macrae  bluntly,  "and  who  is  this  person 
then?" 

Michael  nearly  choked  with  shame. 

"My  governess — my  sister's  governess,  I  mean,"  he  added, 
desperately  trying  to  retrieve  the  situation. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Mr.  Macrae.     "I  see." 

The  form  tittered,  while  the  crimson  Michael  stumbled 
back  to  his  desk.  It  was  a  long  time  before  Avery  grew 
tired  of  Miss  Carthew  or  before  the  class  wearied  of  crying 
"Maudie"  in  an  united  falsetto,  whenever  Michael  ventured 
to  speak.  Mr.  Macrae,  too,  made  cruel  use  of  his  advantage, 
for  whenever  Michael  tripped  over  an  irregular  verb  Mr. 


MORE    ENCOUNTERS  117 

Macrae  would  address  to  the  ceiling  in  his  soft  unpleasant 
voice  sarcastic  remarks  about  governesses,  while  every 
Monday  morning  he  would  make  a  point  of  putting  on  his 
glasses  to  examine  Michael's  home-book  very  carefully. 
The  climax  of  Michael's  discomfort  was  reached  when  a 
snub-nosed  boy  called  Jubb  with  a  cockney  accent  asked 
him  w^hat  his  father  was. 

"He's  dead,"  Michael  answered. 

*'Yes,  but  what  was  he?"  Jubb  persisted. 

"He  was  a  gentleman,"  said  Michael. 

Avery  happened  to  overhear  this  and  was  extremely  witty 
over  Michael's  cockiness,  so  witty  that  Michael  was  goaded 
into  retaliation,  notwithstanding  his  fear  of  Avery's  tongue. 

"Well,  what  is  your  father?"  he  asked. 

"My  father's  a  duke,  and  I've  got  an  uncle  who's  a 
millionaire,  and  my  governess  is  a  queen,"  said  Avery. 

Michael  was  silent;  he  could  not  contend  with  Avery. 
Altogether  the  Upper  Fourth  was  a  very  unpleasant  class; 
but  next  term,  Michael  and  half  of  the  class  were  moved  up 
to  the  Lower  Fifth,  and  Avery  left  to  go  to  a  private  school 
in  Surrey,  because  he  was  ultimately  destined  for  Charter- 
house, near  which  school  his  people  had,  as  he  said,  taken  a 
large  house.  Curiously  enough  the  combination  of  half  the 
Upper  Fourth  with  the  half  of  the  Lower  Fifth  left  behind 
made  a  rather  pleasant  class,  one  that  Michael  enjoyed  as' 
much  as  any  other  so  far,  particularly  as  he  was  beginning 
to  find  that  he  was  clever  enough  to  avoid  doing  as  much 
schoolwork  as  hitherto  he  had  done,  without  in  any  way 
permanently  jeopardizing  his  position  near  the  top  of  the 
form.  To  be  sure  Mr.  Wagstaff,  the  cherub-faced  master  of 
the  Lower  Fifth,  complained  of  his  continually  shifting 
position  from  one  end  of  the  class  to  the  other;  but  Michael 
justified  himself  and  incidentally  somewhat  annoyed  Mr. 
Wagstaff  by  coming  out  head  boy  in  the  Christmas  examina- 
tions.    Meanwhile,  if  he  found  Greek  irregular  verbs  and 


ii8  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Latin  gender  rhymes  tiresome,  Michael  read  unceasingly 
at  home,  preferably  books  that  encouraged  the  private 
schoolboy's  instinct  to  take  sides.  Michael  was  for  the 
Trojans  against  the  Greeks,  partly  on  account  of  the  Greek 
verbs,  but  principally  because  he  once  had  a  straw  hat 
inscribed  H.M.S.  Hector.  He  was  also  for  the  Lancastrians 
against  the  Yorkists,  and,  of  course,  for  the  Jacobites  against 
the  Hanoverians.  Somewhat  illogically,  he  was  for  the 
Americans  against  the  English,  because  as  Miss  Carthew 
pointed  out  he  was  English  himself  and  the  English  were 
beaten.  She  used  to  tease  Michael  for  nearly  always  choos- 
ing the  beaten  side.  She  also  used  to  annoy  him  by  her 
assertion  that,  in  taking  the  part  of  the  Americans  in  the 
War  of  Independence,  he  showed  that  most  of  his  other 
choices  were  only  due  to  the  books  he  read.  She  used  to 
make  him  very  angry  by  saying  that  he  was  at  heart  a 
Roundhead  and  a  Whig,  and  even  hinted  that  he  would 
grow  up  a  Radical.  This  last  insinuation  really  annoyed 
him  very  much  indeed,  because  at  Randell  House  no  boy 
could  be  anything  but  a  Conservative  without  laying  himself 
open  to  the  suggestion  that  he  was  not  a  gentleman. 

In  time,  after  an  absence  of  nearly  two  years,  Mrs.  Fane 
came  home  for  a  long  time ;  but  Michael  did  not  feel  any  of 
those  violent  emotions  of  joy  that  once  he  used  to  feel  when 
he  saw  her  cab  rounding  the  corner.  He  was  shy  of  his 
mother,  and  she  for  her  part  seemed  shy  of  him,  and  told 
Miss  Carthew  that  school  had  not  improved  Michael.  She 
wondered,  too,  why  he  always  seemed  anxious  to  be  playing 
with  other  boys. 

"It's  quite  natural,"  Miss  Carthew  pointed  out. 

"Darling  Michael.  I  suppose  it  is,"  Mrs.  Fane  agreed 
vaguely.     "But  he's  so  grubby  and  inky  now^adays." 

Michael  maintained  somewhat  indignantly  that  all  the 
boys  at  Randell's  were  like  him,  for  he  was  proud  that  by 
being  grubby   and   inky  no   boy  could   detect   in  him   any 


MORE   ENCOUNTERS  119 

p  ■ 

inclination  to  differentiate  himself  from  the  mass.  At 
Randell's,  where  there  was  one  way  only  of  thinking  and 
behaving  and  speaking,  it  would  have  been  grossly  cocky 
to  be  brushed  and  clean.  Michael  resented  his  mother's 
attempt  to  dress  him  nicely  and  was  almost  rude  when  she 
suggested  ideas  for  charming  and  becoming  costumes. 

"I  do  think  boys  are  funny,"  she  used  to  sigh. 

"Well,  mother,"  Michael  would  argue,  "if  I  wore  a 
suit  like  that  all  the  other  boys  would  notice  it." 

"But  I  think  it's  nice  to  be  noticed,"  Mrs.  Fane  would 
contend. 

"I  think  it's  beastly,"  Michael  always  said. 

"I  wish  you  wouldn't  use  that  horrid  word,"  his  mother 
would  say  disapprovingly. 

"All  the  boys  do,"  was  Michael's  Invariable  last  word. 

Then,  "Michael,"  Miss  Carthew  would  say  sharply,  as 
she  fixed  him  with  that  cold  look  which  he  so  much 
dreaded.  Michael  would  blush  and  turn  away,  abashed; 
while  Stella's  company  would  be  demanded  by  his  mother 
instead  of  his,  and  Stella  would  come  into  the  room  all 
lily-rosed  beside  her  imp-like  brother. 

Stella  was  held  by  Michael  to  be  affected,  and  he  would 
often  point  out  to  her  how  little  such  behavior  would  be 
tolerated  at  a  boys'  school.  Stella's  usual  reply  was  to  pout, 
a  form  of  expression  which  came  under  the  category  of 
affectations,  or  she  would  cry,  which  was  a  degree  worse 
and  was  considered  to  be  as  good  as  sneaking  outright. 
Michael  often  said  he  hoped  that  school  would  improve 
Stella's  character  and  behavior;  yet  when  she  went  to 
school,  Michael  thought  that  not  only  was  she  none  the 
better  for  the  experience,  but  he  was  even  inclined  to  sug- 
gest that  she  was  very  much  the  worse.  Tiresome  little 
girl  friends  came  to  tea  sometimes  and  altered  Michael's 
arrangements;  and  when  they  came  they  used  to  giggle  in 
corners    and    Stella    used    to    show   off   detestably.     Once 


I20  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Michael  was  so  much  vexed  by  a  certain  Dorothy  that  he 
kissed  her  spitefully,  and  a  commotion  ensued  from  the 
middle  of  which  rose  Miss  Carthew,  gray-eyed  and  august 
like  Pallas  Athene  in  The  Heroes.  It  seemed  to  Michael 
that  altogether  too  much  importance  was  attached  to  this 
incident.  He  had  merely  kissed  Dorothy  in  order  to  show 
his  contempt  for  her  behavior.  One  would  think  from  the 
lecture  given  by  Miss  Carthew  that  it  was  pleasant  to  kiss 
giggling  little  girls.  Michael  felt  thoroughly  injured  by  the 
imputation  of  gallantry,  and  sulked  instead  of  giving  reasons. 

"I  really  think  your  mother  is  right,"  Miss  Carthew  said 
at  last.     ''You  are  quite  different  from  the  old  Michael." 

"I  didn't  want  to  kiss  her,"  he  cried,  exasperated. 

"Doesn't  that  make  it  all  the  worse?"  Miss  Carthew  sug- 
gested. 

Michael  shrugged  his  shoulders,  feeling  powerless  to  con- 
tend with  all  this  stupidity  of  opinion. 

"Surely,"  said  Miss  Carthew  at  last,  "Don  Quixote  or 
General  Mace  or  Henry  V  wouldn't  have  kissed  people 
against  their  will  in  order  to  be  spiteful." 

"They  might,"  argued  Michael;  "if  rotten  little  girls 
came  to  tea  and  made  them  angry." 

"I  will  not  have  that  word  'rotten'  used  in  front  of  me," 
Miss  Carthew  said. 

"Well,  fat-headed,  then,'*  Michael  proposed  as  a  eu- 
phemism. 

"The  truth  is,"  Miss  Carthew  pointed  out,  "you  were 
angry  because  you  couldn't  have  the  Macalisters  to  tea  and 
you  vented  your  anger  on  poor  Stella  and  her  friends.  I 
call  it  mean  and  unchivalrous." 

"Well,  Stella  goes  to  mother  and  asks  for  Dorothy  to 
come  to  tea,  when  you  told  me  I  could  have  the  Macalisters, 
and  I  don't  see  why  I  should  always  have  to  give  way." 

"Boys  always  give  way  to  girls,"  generalized  Miss  Car- 
thew. 


MORE    ENCOUNTERS  121 


"I  don't  believe  they  do  nowadays,"  said  Michael. 

"I  see  it's  hopeless  to  argue  any  more.  I'm  sorry  you 
won't  see  you're  in  the  wrong.  It  makes  me  feel  disap- 
pointed." 

Michael  again  shrugged  his  shoulders. 

"I  don't  see  how  I  can  possibly  ask  your  mother  to  let 
Nancy  stay  here  next  Christmas.  I  suppose  you'll  be  trying 
to  kiss  her." 

Michael  really  had  to  laugh  at  this. 

"Why,  I  like  Nancy  awfully,"  he  said.  "And  we  both 
think  kissing  is  fearful  rot — I  mean  frightfully  stupid.  But 
I  won't  do  it  again.  Miss  Carthew.  I'm  sorry.  I  am 
really." 

There  was  one  great  advantage  in  dealing  with  Miss 
Carthew.  She  was  always  ready  to  forgive  at  once,  and,  as 
Michael  respected  her  enough  to  dislike  annoying  her,  he 
found  it  perfectly  easy  to  apologize  and  be  friends — par- 
ticularly as  he  had  set  his  heart  on  Nancy's  Christmas  visit. 

Carlington  Road  and  the  Confederate  Roads  were  now 
under  the  control  of  Michael  and  his  friends.  Rodber  had 
gone  away  to  a  public  school:  the  elder  Macalister  and 
Garrod  had  both  got  bicycles,  which  occupied  all  their 
time:  Michael,  the  twin  Macalisters  and  a  boy  called  Nor- 
ton were  in  a  very  strong  position  of  authority.  Norton 
had  two  young  brothers  and  the  Macalisters  had  one,  so 
that  there  were  three  slaves  in  perpetual  attendance.  It 
became  the  fashion  to  forsake  the  school  field  for  the  more 
adventurous  wasteland  of  the  neighborhood.  At  the  end 
of  Carlington  Road  itself  still  existed  what  was  practically 
open  country  as  far  as  it  lasted.  There  were  elm-trees  and 
declivities  and  broken  hedges  and  the  excavated  hollows 
of  deserted  gravel  pits.  There  was  an  attractive  zigzag 
boundary  •  fence  which  was  sufficiently  ruinous  at  certain 
intervals  to  let  a  boy  through  to  wander  in  the  allotments 
of  railway  workers.  Bands  of  predatory  "cads"  prowled 
9 


122  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

about  this  wasteland,  and  many  were  the  fierce  fights  at 
sundown  between  the  cads  and  the  Randellites.  Caps  were 
taken  for  scalps,  and  Miss  Carthew  was  horrified  to  ob- 
serve nailed  to  Michael's  bedroom  wall  the  filthiest  cap  she 
had  ever  seen. 

Apart  from  the  battles  there  were  the  luxurious  camps, 
w^here  cigarettes  at  five  a  penny  were  smoked  to  the  last 
pufE  and  were  succeeded  by  the  consumption  of  highly 
scented  sweets  to  remove  the  traces  of  tobacco.  These 
camps  were  mostly  pitched  in  the  gravelly  hollows,  where 
Michael  and  the  Macalisters  and  Norton  used  to  sit  round  a 
campfire  on  the  warm  evenings  of  summer,  while  silhouet- 
ted against  the  blue  sky  above  stood  the  minor  Macalister 
and  the  junior  Nortons  in  ceaseless  vigilance.  The  bait  held 
out  to  these  sentries,  who  sometimes  mutinied,  was  their 
equipment  with  swords,  guns,  pistols,  shields,  bows,  arms 
and  breastplates.  So,  heavily  and  decoratively  armed  and 
sustained  by  the  prospect  of  peppermint  bull's-eyes,  Dicky 
Macalister  and  the  two  Nortons  were  content  for  an  hour 
to  scan  the  horizon  for  marauding  cads,  while  down  below 
the  older  boys  discussed  life  in  all  its  ambiguity  and  compli- 
cation. These  symposiums  in  the  gravel  pit  tried  to  solve 
certain  problems  in  a  very  speculative  manner. 

"There  must  be  some  secret  about  being  married,"  said 
Michael  one  Saturday  afternoon,  when  the  sun  blazed  down 
upon  the  sentries  and  the  last  cigarette  had  been  smoked. 

"There  is,"  Norton  agreed. 

"I  can't  make  out  about  twins,"  Michael  continued, 
looking  critically  at  the  Macalisters. 

Siegfried  Macalister,  generally  known  as  "Smack,"  in 
distinction  to  his  brother  Hugh,  always  called  "Mac,"  felt 
bound  to  offer  a  suggestion. 

"There's  twenty  minutes'  difference  between  us.  I  heard 
my  mater  tell  a  visitor,  and  besides  I'm  the  eldest." 

Speculation  was  temporarily  interrupted  by   a  bout  be- 


MORE   ENCOUNTERS  123 


tween  Smack  and  Mac,  because  neither  was  allowed  to  claim 
priority.  At  the  end  of  an  indecisive  round,  Michael  struck 
in: 

"But  why  are  there  twins?  People  don't  like  twins  com- 
ing, because  in  Ally  Sloper  there's  always  a  joke  about 
twins." 

"I  know  married  people  who  haven't  got  any  children 
at  all,"  said  Norton,  in  order  still  more  elaborately  to  com- 
plicate the  point  at  issue. 

"Yes,  there  you  are,"  said  Michael.  "There's  some  secret 
about  marriage." 

"There's  a  book  in  my  mater's  room  which  I  believe 
would  tell  us,"  hinted  Smack. 

"There's  a  good  deal  in  the  Bible,"  Norton  observed. 
"Only  it's  difficult  to  find  the  places  and  then  you  can't 
tell  for  certain  what  they  mean." 

Then  came  a  long  whispering,  at  the  end  of  which  the 
four  boys  shook  their  heads  very  wisely  and  said  that  they 
were  sure  that  was  it. 

"Hullo!"  Michael  shouted,  forgetting  the  debate. 
"Young  Dicky's  signaling." 

"Indians,"  said  Mac. 

"Sioux  or  Apaches?"  asked  Smack  anxiously. 

"Neither.     It's  Arabs.       Charge,"  shouted  Norton. 

All  problems  went  to  the  winds  in  the  glories  of  action, 
in  the  clash  of  stick  on  stick,  in  the  rending  of  cad's  collar 
and  cad's  belt,  and  in  the  final  defeat  of  the  Arabs  with  the 
loss  of  their  caravan — a  sugar-box  on  a  pair  of  elliptical 
wheels. 

In  addition  to  the  arduous  military  life  led  by  Michael 
at  this  period,  he  was  also  in  common  with  Smack  and  Mac 
and  Norton  a  multiplex  collector.  At  first  the  two  principal 
collections  were  silkworms  and  silver  paper.  Afterwards 
came  postage  stamps  and  coins  and  medals  and  autographs 
and  birds'  eggs  and  shells  and  fossils  and  bones  and  skins 


124  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

and  butterflies  and  moths  and  portraits  of  famous  cricketers. 
From  the  moment  the  first  silkworm  was  brought  home  in 
a  perforated  cardboard  box  to  the  moment  when  by  some 
arrangement  of  vendible  material  the  first  bicycle  was  se- 
cured, the  greater  part  of  Michael's  leisure  was  mysteri- 
ously occupied  in  swapping.  This  swapping  would  continue 
until  the  mere  theory  of  swapping  for  swapping's  sake,  as 
exemplified  in  a  paper  called  The  Exchange  and  Mart, 
was  enough.  When  this  journal  became  the  rage  the  most 
delightful  occupation  of  Michael  and  his  friends  was  that 
of  poring  over  the  columns  of  this  medium  of  barter  in 
order  to  read  of  X.Y.Z.  in  Northumberland,  who  was 
willing  to  exchange  five  Buff  Orpingtons,  a  suit,  a  tennis 
racket  and  Cowper's  Poems  for  a  mechanical  organ  or  a 
five  foot  by  four  foot  greenhouse.  All  the  romance  of 
commerce  w^as  to  be  found  in  The  Exchange  and  Mart, 
together  with  practical  hints  on  the  moulting  of  canaries  or 
red  mange  in  collies.  Cricket  was  in  the  same  way  made  a 
mathematical  abstraction  of  decimals  and  initials  and  aver- 
ages and  records.  All  sorts  of  periodicals  were  taken  in 
— Cricket,  The  Cricketer,  Cricketing,  among  many 
others.  From  an  exact  perusal  of  these,  Michael  and  the 
Macalisters  knew  that  Streatham  could  beat  Hampstead  and 
were  convinced  of  the  superiority  of  the  Incogniti  C.C.  over 
the  Stoics  C.C.  With  the  collections  of  cricketers'  por- 
traits some  of  these  figures  acquired  a  conceivable  person- 
ality; but  for  the  most  part,  they  remained  L.M.N. O.P.Q. 
Smith  representing  36.58  an  innings  and  R.S.T.U.V.W. 
Brown  costing  11.07  ^  wicket.  That  they  wore  mustaches, 
lived  and  loved  like  passionate  humanity  did  not  seem  to 
matter  compared  with  the  arithmetical  progression  of  their 
averages.  When  Michael  and  Norton  (who  was  staying 
with  him  at  St.  Leonards)  were  given  shillings  and  told 
to  see  the  Hastings'  Cricket  Week  from  the  bowling  of  the 
first  ball  to  the  drawing  of  the  final  stump,  Michael  and 


MORE    ENCOUNTERS  125 

Norton  were  very  much  bored  indeed,  and  deprecated  the 
waste  of  time  in  watching  real  cricket,  when  they  might 
have  been  better  occupied  in  collating  the  weekly  cricketing 
journals. 

At  Christmas  Michael  emerged  from  a  successful  au- 
tumn term  with  Stories  from  the  Odyssey,  by  Dean 
Church,  and  a  chestnut  that  w^as  reputed  to  have  conquered 
nine  hundred  and  sixty-six  other  and  softer  chestnuts.  That 
nine  hundred  and  sixty-sixer  of  Michael's  was  a  famous  nut, 
and  the  final  struggle  between  it  (then  a  five  hundred  and 
forty-oner)  and  the  four  hundred  and  twxnty-fourer  it 
smashed  was  a  contest  long  talked  of  in  circles  where  Con- 
querors were  played.  Michael  much  regretted  that  the 
etiquette  of  the  Lent  term,  which  substituted  peg-tops  for 
Conquerors,  should  prevent  his  chestnut  reaching  four  fig- 
ures. He  knew  that  next  autumn  term,  if  all  fell  out  as 
planned,  he  would  be  at  St.  James'  School  itself,  where 
Conquerors  and  tops  and  marbles  were  never  even  men- 
tioned, save  as  vanities  and  toys  of  early  youth.  However, 
he  swapped  the  nine  hundred  and  sixty-sixer  for  seven  white 
mice  and  a  slow-worm  in  spirits  of  wine  belonging  to  Nor- 
ton; and  he  had  the  satisfaction  of  hearing  later  on  that 
after  a  year  in  rejuvenating  oil  the  nine  hundred  and  sixty- 
sixer  became  a  two  thousand  and  thirty-threer  before  it 
fell  down  a  drain,  undefeated. 

After  Christmas  Nancy  Carthew  came  up  from  Hamp- 
shire to  spend  a  fortnight  at  Carlington  Road,  and  the  holi- 
days were  spent  in  a  fever  of  theaters  and  monuments  and 
abbeys.  Michael  asked  Nancy  what  she  thought  of  Stella 
and  her  affectation,  and  was  surprised  by  Nancy  saying  she 
thought  Stella  was  an  awfully  jolly  kid  and  "no  end  good" 
at  the  piano.  Michael,  in  consideration  of  Nancy's  en- 
comium, tried  to  take  a  fresh  view  of  Stella,  and  was  able 
sincerely  to  admit  that,  compared  with  many  other  little 
girls  of  the  neighborhood,  Stella  was  fairly  pretty.     He  de- 


126  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

cided  that  it  would  be  a  good  thing  for  Norton  to  marry 
her.  He  told  Norton  that  there  seemed  no  reason  why  he 
and  Stella  should  not  come  together  in  affection,  and  Norton 
said  that,  if  Michael  thought  he  should,  he  was  perfectly 
willing  to  marry  Stella,  when  he  was  grown  up.  Michael 
thereupon  swapped  a  box  of  somewhat  bent  dragoons  for 
a  ring,  and  presented  this  ring  to  Norton  with  the  injunc- 
tion that  he  should  on  no  account  tell  Stella  that  he  was 
engaged  to  her,  in  case  it  made  her  cocky.  He  also  forbade 
Norton  to  kiss  her  (not  that  he  supposed  Norton  wanted  to 
kiss  Stella),  because  Miss  Carthew  would  be  annoyed  and 
might  possibly  close  the  area  door  to  Norton  for  the  future. 

When  Nancy  went  back  to  Hampshire,  Michael  felt 
lonely.  The  Macalisters  and  the  Nortons  had  gone  away 
on  visits,  and  Carlington  Road  was  dreary  without  them. 
Michael  read  a  great  deal  and  by  reason  of  being  at  home  he 
gradually  became  less  grubby,  as  the  holidays  wore  on. 
Also  his  hair  grew  long  and  waved  over  his  forehead  with 
golden  lights  and  shadows  and  curled  in  bunches  by  his 
ears.  A  new  Eton  suit  well  became  him,  and  his  mother 
said  how  charming  he  looked.  Michael  deplored  good  looks 
in  boys,  but  he  managed  to  endure  the  possession  of  them 
during  the  little  space  that  remained  before  the  Lent  term 
began.  He  took  to  frequenting  the  drawing-room  again  as 
of  old,  and,  being  nowadays  allowed  to  stay  up  till  a  quarter 
to  nine,  he  used  to  spend  a  rosy  half-hour  after  dinner  sit- 
ting on  a  footstool  in  the  firelight  by  his  mother's  knee. 
She  used  to  stroke  his  hair  and  sigh  sometimes,  when  she 
looked  at  him. 

One  afternoon,  just  before  term  began,  Mrs.  Fane  told 
him  to  make  himself  as  tidy  as  possible,  because  she  wanted 
to  take  him  out  to  pay  a  call.  Michael  was  excited  by  this 
notion,  especially  when  he  heard  that  they  were  to  travel 
by  hansom,  a  form  of  vehicle  which  he  greatly  admired. 
The    hansom    bowled    along    the   Kensington    Road    with 


MORE    ENCOUNTERS  127 

Michael  in  his  Eton  suit  and  top  hat  sitting  beside  his 
mother,  scented  sweetly  with  delicious  perfumes  and  very 
silky  to  the  touch.  They  drove  past  Kensington  Gardens, 
all  dripping  with  January  rains,  past  Hyde  Park  and  the 
Albert  Memorial,  past  the  barracks  of  the  Household  Cav- 
alry, past  Hyde  Park  Corner  and  the  Duke  of  Wellington's 
house.  They  dashed  along  with  a  jingle  and  a  rattle  over 
the  slow  old  omnibus  route,  and  Michael  felt  very  much 
distinguished  as  he  turned  round  to  look  at  the  melancholy 
people  crammed  inside  each  omnibus  they  passed.  When 
they  came  to  Devonshire  House,  they  turned  round  to  the 
left  and  pulled  up  before  a  grand  house  in  a  square.  Michael 
pressed  the  bell,  and  the  door  opened  immediately,  much 
more  quickly  than  he  had  ever  known  a  door  open. 

"Is  his  lordship  in?"  asked  Mrs.  Fane. 

"His  lordship  is  upstairs,  ma'am,"  said  the  footman. 

The  hall  seemed  full  of  footmen,  one  of  whom  took 
Michael's  hat  and  another  of  whom  led  the  way  up  a  wide 
soft  staircase  that  smelled  like  the  inside  of  the  South  Ken- 
sington Museum.  All  the  way  up,  the  walls  were  hung 
with  enormous  pictures  of  men  in  white  wigs.  Presently 
they  stood  in  the  largest  room  Michael  had  even  entered,  a 
still  white  room  full  of  golden  furniture.  Michael  had 
barely  recovered  his  breath  from  astonishment  at  the  size 
of  the  room,  when  he  saw  another  room  round  the  corner, 
in  which  a  man  was  sitting  by  a  great  fire.  When  the  foot- 
man had  left  the  room  very  quietly,  this  man  got  up  and 
held  Mrs.  Fane's  hand  for  nearly  a  minute.  Then  he  looked 
at  Michael  curiously,  Michael  thought,  so  curiously  as  to 
make  him  blush. 

"And  this  is  the  boy?"  the  gentleman  asked. 

Michael  thought  his  mother  spoke  very  funnily,  as  if 
she  were  just  going  to  cry,  when  she  answered: 

"Yes,  this  is  Michael." 


128  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"My  God,  Valerie,"  said  the  man,  "it  makes  it  harder 
than  ever." 

Michael  took  the  opportunity  to  look  at  this  odd  man 
and  tried  to  think  where  he  had  seen  him  before.  He  was 
sure  he  had  seen  him  somewhere.  But  every  time,  just  as 
he  had  almost  remembered,  a  mist  came  over  the  picture 
he  w^as  trying  to  form,  so  that  he  could  not  remember. 

"Well,  Michael,"  said  the  gentleman,  "you  don't  know 
who  I  am." 

"Ah,  don't,  Charles,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"Well,  he's  not  so  wise  as  all  that,"  laughed  the  gentle- 
man. 

Michael  thought  it  was  a  funny  laugh,  more  sad  than 
cheerful. 

"This  is  Lord  Saxby,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"I  say,  my  name  is  Saxby,"  Michael  exclaimed. 

"Nonsense,"   said   Lord   Saxby,   "I  don't  believe  it." 

"It  is  really.     Charles  Michael  Saxby  Fane." 

"Well,   that's  a  very  strange  thing,"  said   Lord   Saxby. 

"Yes,  I  think  it's  awfully  funny,"  Michael  agreed.  "Be- 
cause I  never  heard  of  anyone  called  Saxby.  My  name's 
Charles,  too.  Only,  of  course,  that's  quite  a  common  name. 
But  nobody  at  our  school  knows  Fm  called  Saxby  except  a 
boy  called  Buckley,  who's  an  awful  beast.  We  don't  tell 
our  Christian  names,  you  know.  If  a  chap  lets  out  his 
Christian  name,  he  gets  most  frightfully  ragged  by  the 
other  chaps.  Chaps  think  you're  an  awfully  silly  ass  if  you 
let  out  your  Christian  name." 

Michael  was  finding  it  very  easy  to  talk. 

"I  must  hear  some  more  about  this  w^onderful  school," 
Lord  Saxby  declared. 

Then  followed  a  delightful  conversation  in  which  due 
justice  was  done  to  the  Macalister  twins  and  to  Norton, 
and  to  the  life  they  shared  with  Michael. 


MORE    ENCOUNTERS 129 

"By  gad,  Valerie,  he  ought  to  go  to  Eton,  you  know,'* 
declared  Lord  Saxby,  turning  to  Michael's  mother. 

"No,  no.  I'm  sure  you  were  right  when  you  said  St. 
James',"  persisted  Mrs.  Fanie. 

"Perhaps  I  was,"  Lord  Saxby  sighed.  "Well,  Valerie — 
not  again.     It's  too  damnably  tantalizing." 

"I  thought  just  once  while  he  was  still  small,"  said  Mrs. 
Fane  softly.  "Photographs  are  so  unsatisfactory.  And  you 
haven't  yet  heard  Stella  play." 

"Valerie,  I  couldn't.  Look  at  this  great  barrack  of  a 
house.  If  you  only  knew  how  I  long  sometimes  for — what 
a  muddle  it  all  is!" 

Then  a  footman  came  in  with  tea,  and  Michael  wondered 
what  dinner  was  like  in  this  house  if  mere  tea  were  so  grand 
and  silvery. 

"I  think  I  must  drive  you  back  in  the  phaeton,"  said 
Lord  Saxby. 

"No,  no,  Charles.     No  more  rules  must  be  broken." 

"Yes,  I  suppose  you're  right.  But  don't — not  again, 
please.     I  can't  bear  to  think  of  the  *ifs.'  " 

Then  Lord  Saxby  turned  to  Michael. 

"Look  here,  young  man,  what  do  you  want  most?" 

"Oh,  boxes  of  soldiers  and  an  unused  set  of  Siamese," 
said  Michael. 

"Siamese  what?     Siamese  cats?" 

"No,  you  silly,"  laughed  Michael.     "Stamps,  of  course!'* 

"Oh,  stamps,"  said  Lord  Saxby.  "Right — and  soldiers, 
eh?     Good." 

All  the  way  back  in  the  hansom  Michael  wished  he  had 
specified  artillery  to  Lord  Saxby;  but  two  days  afterward 
dozens  of  boxes  of  all  kinds  of  soldiers  arrived,  and  unused 
sets  not  merely  of  Siamese,  but  of  North  American  Ter- 
centenaries and  Borneos  and  Labuans  and  many  others. 

"I  say,"  Michael  gasped,  "he's  a  ripper,  isn't  he?    What 


130  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

spiffing  boxes!  I  say,  he  is  a  decent  chap,  isn't  he?  When 
are  we  going  to  see  Lord  Saxby  again,  mother?" 

"Some  day." 

"I  can  have  Norton  to  tea  on  Wednesday,  can't  I?** 
begged  Michael.  ''He'll  think  my  soldiers  are  awfully  rip- 
ping." 

"Darling  Michael,"  said  his  mother. 

"Mother,  I  will  try  and  not  be  inky,"  said  Michael  in 
a  burst  of  affectionate  renunciation. 

"Dearest  boy,"  said  his  mother  gently. 


CHAPTER    IX 
HOLIDAYS    IN    FRANCE 

IN  Michael's  last  term  at  St.  James'  Preparatory  School, 
Mrs.  Fane  settled  that  he  should  for  the  holidays 
go  to  France  with  Mr.  Vernon  and  Mr.  Lodge,  two 
masters  who  were  accustomed  each  year  to  take  a  few  boys 
away  with  them  to  the  coast  of  Brittany.  Five  boys  were 
going  this  summer — Michael  and  Hands  and  Hargreaves 
and  Jubb  and  Rutherford;  and  all  five  of  them  bragged 
about  their  adventure  for  days  before  school  broke  up. 
Miss  Carthew  drove  with  Michael  to  Victoria  Station  and 
handed  him  over  to  Mr.  Lodge,  who  was  walking  about  in 
a  very  thick  and  romantic  overcoat.  Mr.  Lodge  was  a 
clean-shaven,  large-faced  and  popular  master,  and  Mr.  Ver- 
non vv^as  an  equally  popular  master,  deep-voiced,  heavy-mus- 
tached,  hook-nosed.  In  fact,  it  was  impossible  to  say  which 
of  the  two  one  liked  the  better.  Mr.  Lodge  at  once  pro- 
duced two  packets  of  Mazawattee  tea,  which  he  told 
Michael  to  put  in  his  pocket  and  say  nothing  about  when 
he  landed  in  France,  and  when  Hands,  Hargreaves,  Ruther- 
ford and  Jubb  arrived,  they  were  all  given  packets  of  tea  by 
Mr.  Lodge  and  told  to  say  nothing  about  them  when  they 
landed  in  France.  Mr.  Vernon  appeared,  looking  very 
business-like  and  shouting  directions  about  the  luggage  to 
porters,  while  Mr.  Lodge  gathered  the  boys  together  and 
steered  them  through  the  barrier  on  to  the  platform  and 
into  the  train  for  Newhaven.     The  steamer  by  which  they 

131 


132  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

were  going  to  cross  was  not  an  ordinary  packet-boat,  but  a 
cargo-boat  carrying  vegetable  ivory.  For  Channel  voyagers 
they  were  going  to  be  a  long  while  at  sea,  calling  at  Havre 
and  afterwards  rounding  Cherbourg  and  Brest,  before  they 
reached  St.  Corentin,  the  port  of  their  destination  at  the 
mouth  of  the  Loire.  It  was  rough  weather  all  the  way  to 
Havre,  and  Michael  was  too  ill  to  notice  much  the  crew 
or  the  boat  or  any  of  the  other  boys.  However,  the  excite- 
ment of  disembarking  at  Havre  about  midnight  put  an  end 
to  seasickness,  for  it  was  very  thrilling  at  such  an  hour  to 
follow  Mr.  Lodge  and  Mr.  Vernon  through  the  gloomy 
wharves  and  under  their  dripping  archways.  When,  after 
this  strange  walk,  they  came  to  a  wide  square  and  saw 
cafes  lighted  up  and  chairs  and  tables  in  the  open  air  before 
the  doors,  Michael  felt  that  life  was  opening  out  on  a  vista 
of  hitherto  unimagined  possibilities.  They  all  sat  down  at 
midnight,  wrapped  up  in  their  traveling  coats  and  not  at 
all  too  much  tired  to  sip  grenadine  sucree  and  to  crunch 
Petit  Beurre  biscuits.  Michael  thought  grenadine  sucree 
was  just  as  nice  as  it  looked  and  turned  to  Hands,  a  skull- 
headed  boy  who  was  sitting  next  to  him: 

'1  say,  this  is  awfully  decent,  isn't  it?" 

''Rather,"  squeaked  Hands  in  his  high  voice.  "Much 
nicer  than  pineappleade." 

After  they  had  stayed  there  for  a  time,  watching  isolated 
passers-by  slouch  across  the  wind-blown  square,  Mr.  Lodge 
announced  they  must  hurry  back  to  the  boat  and  get  a  good 
night's  sleep.  Back  they  went  between  the  damp  walls  of 
the  shadowy  wharves,  plastered  with  unfamiliar  advertise- 
ments, until  they  reached  their  boat  and  went  to  bed.  In 
the  morning,  when  Michael  woke  up,  the  steamer  was  pitch- 
ing and  rolling:  everything  in  the  cabin  was  lying  in  a 
jumble  on  the  floor,  and  Rutherford  and  Hargreaves  were 
sitting  up  in  their  bunks  wide  awake.  Rutherford  was  the 
oldest  boy  of  the  party  and  he  was  soon  going  in  for  his 


HOLIDAYS    IN    FRANCE  133 

Navy  examination;  but  he  had  been  so  seasick  the  day 
before  that  Michael  felt  that  he  was  just  as  accessible  as  the 
others  and  was  no  longer  afraid  to  talk  to  this  hero  without 
being  spoken  to  first.  Rutherford,  having  been  so  sick,  felt 
bound  to  put  on  a  few  airs  of  grandeur ;  but  he  was  pleasant 
enough  and  very  full  of  information  about  many  subjects 
which  had  long  puzzled  Michael.  He  spoke  with  authority 
on  life  and  death  and  birth  and  love  and  marriage,  so  that 
when  Michael  emerged  into  the  wind  from  the  jumbled 
cabin  he  felt  that  to  dress  beside  Rutherford  was  an  event 
not  easily  to  be  forgotten:  but  later  on  as  he  paced  the 
foam-spattered  deck,  and  meditated  on  the  facts  of  existence 
so  confidently  revealed,  he  began  to  fear  that  the  learned 
Rutherford  was  merely  a  retailer  of  unwarranted  legends. 
Still  he  had  propounded  enough  for  Michael,  when  he  re- 
turned to  Carlington  Road,  to  theorize  upon  and  impart  to 
the  Macalisters;  and  anyway,  without  bothering  about 
physiological  problems,  it  was  certainly  splendid  to  walk 
about  the  deck  in  the  wind  and  rain,  and  no  longer  to  hate, 
but  even  to  enjoy,  the  motion  of  the  boat.  It  was  exhilarat- 
ing to  clamber  right  up  into  the  bows  among  coils  of  rope 
and  to  see  how  the  boat  charged  through  the  spuming  water. 
Michael  nearly  made  up  his  mind  to  be  a  sailor  instead  of  a 
Bengal  Lancer,  and  looked  enviously  at  the  ship's  boy  in  his 
blue  blouse.  But  presently  he  heard  a  savage  voice,  and  one 
of  the  sailors  so  much  admired  kicked  the  ship's  boy  down 
the  companion  into  the  forecastle.  Michael  was  horrified, 
when,  late  in  the  gray  and  stormy  afternoon,  he  heard  cries 
of  pain  from  somewhere  down  below.  He  ran  to  peer  into 
the  pit  whence  they  came,  and  in  the  half  light  he  could  see 
a  rope's-end  clotted  with  blood.  This  sight  dismayed  him, 
and  he  longed  to  ask  Mr.  Lodge  or  Mr.  Vernon  to  inter- 
fere and  save  the  poor  ship's  boy,  but  a  feeling  of  shame 
compelled  silence  and,  though  he  was  sincerely  shocked  by 
the  thought  of  the  cruel  scenes  acted  down  there  in  the  heart 


134  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

of  the  ship,  he  could  not  keep  back  a  certain  exultation  and 
excitement  similar  to  that  which  he  had  felt  at  Folkestone 
in  the  girls'  school  last  summer. 

Soon  the  steamer  with  its  cargo  of  vegetable  ivory  and 
tortured  ship's  boy  and  brutal  crew  were  all  forgotten  in 
the  excitement  of  arriving  at  St.  Corentin,  of  driving  miles 
into  the  country  until  they  reached  the  house  where  they 
were  going  to  spend  six  weeks.  It  was  an  old  house  set  far 
back  from  the  high  road  and  reached  by  a  long  drive  be- 
tween pollarded  acacias.  All  round  the  house  were  great 
fig  trees  and  pear  trees  and  plum  trees.  The  garden  was 
rank  with  unpruned  gooseberry  and  currant  bushes,  untidy 
with  scrambling  gourds  and  grape  vines.  It  was  a  garden 
utterly  unlike  any  garden  that  Michael  had  ever  known. 
There  seemed  to  be  no  flowers  in  this  overw^helming  vege- 
tation which  matted  everything.  It  was  like  the  garden  of 
the  Sleeping  Beauty's  palace.  The  crumbling  walls  were 
webbed  with  briars;  their  foundations  were  buried  in 
thickets  of  docks  and  nettles,  and  the  fruit  trees  that  grew 
against  them  had  long  ago  broken  loose  from  any  restraint. 
It  was  a  garden  that  must  surely  take  a  very  long  time  to 
explore,  so  vast  was  it,  so  trackless,  so  much  did  every  corner 
demand  a  slow  advance. 

When  the  bo5^s  had  unpacked  and  when  they  had  been 
introduced  to  Mrs.  Wylde,  the  mistress  of  the  house,  and 
when  they  had  presented  to  her  the  packets  of  Mazawattee 
tea  and  when  they  themselves  had  eaten  a  deliciously  novel 
dinner  at  the  unusual  hour  of  six,  they  all  set  out  to  explore 
the  luxuriant  wilderness  behind  the  house.  Mr.  Vernon  and 
Mr.  Lodge  shouted  to  them  to  eat  only  the  ripe  fruit,  and 
with  this  solitary  injunction  left  them  to  their  own  amuse- 
ments until  bedtime.  Rutherford,  Hargreaves  and  Jubb  at 
once  set  out  to  find  ripe  fruit,  and,  as  the  first  tree  they 
came  to  was  loaded  with  greengages,  Rutherford,  Har- 
greaves and  Jubb  postponed  all  exploration  for  the  present. 


HOLIDAYS    IN   FRANCE  135 

Michael  and  Hands,  who  was  sleeping  in  his  room,  and 
with  whom  he  had  already  made  friends,  left  the  others 
behind  them.  As  they  walked  farther  from  the  house,  they 
spoke  in  low  tones,  so  silent  was  this  old  garden. 

"Fm  sure  it's  haunted,"  said  Michael.  "I  never  felt  so 
funny,  not  exactly  frightened,  you  know,  but  sort  of  fright- 
ened." 

"It's  still  quite  light,"  squeaked  the  hopeful  Hands. 

"Yes,  but  the  sun's  behind  all  these  trees  and  you  can't 
hear  anything,  but  only  us  walking,"  whispered  Michael. 

However,  they  went  on  through  a  jungle  of  artichokes 
and  through  an  orchard  of  gnarled  apple  trees  past  a  mil- 
dewed summerhouse,  until  they  reached  a  serpentine  path 
between  privet  bushes,  strongly  scented  in  the  dampness  all 
around. 

"Shall  we?"  murmured  Hands  doubtfully. 

"Yes.  We  can  bunk  back  if  we  see  anything,"  said 
Michael.     "I  like  this." 

They  walked  on,  following  the  zigzags  of  the  path,  but 
stopped  dead  as  a  blackbird  shrilled  and  flapped  into  the 
bushes  affrighted. 

"By  Jove,  that  beastly  bird  made  me  awfully  funky,"  said 
Michael. 

"Let's  go  back,"  said  Hands.  "Suppose  we  got  murdered. 
People  do  in  France." 

"Rot,"  said  Michael.  "Not  in  a  private  garden,  you 
cuckoo." 

With  mutual  encouragement  the  two  boys  wandered  on, 
until  they  found  farther  progress  barred  by  a  high  hedge, 
impenetrable  apparently  and  viewless  to  Michael  and  Hands 
who  were  not  very  tall. 

"What  sucks!"  said  Michael.  "I  hate  turning  back.  I 
think  it's  rotten  to  turn  back.  Don't  you?  Hullo!"  he 
cried.  "Look  here,  Hands.  Here's  a  regular  sort  of  tunnel 
going  down  hill.     It's  quite  steep." 


136  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

In  a  moment  Hands  and  Michael  were  half  sliding,  half 
climbing  down  a  cliff.  The  lower  they  went,  the  faster 
they  traveled,  and  soon  they  were  sliding  all  the  way,  be- 
cause they  had  to  guard  their  faces  against  the  brambles  that 
twined  above  them. 

''Good  lord,"  gasped  Michael,  as  he  bumped  down  a  sheer 
ten-feet  of  loose  earth.  'Tm  getting  jolly  bumped.  Look 
out,  Hands,  you  kicked  my  neck,  you  ass." 

"I  can't  help  it,"  gasped  Hands.  "I'm  absolutely  slip- 
ping, and  if  I  try  to  catch  hold  I  scratch  myself." 

They  w^re  sliding  so  fast  that  the  only  thing  to  do  was 
to  laugh  and  give  way.  So,  with  shouts  and  laughter  and 
bumps  and  jolts  and  the  pushing  of  loose  stones  and  earth 
before  them,  Michael  and  Hands  came  with  a  run  to  the 
bottom  of  the  cliff  and  landed  at  last  on  soft  sea-sand. 

"By  gum,"  said  Michael,  "we're  right  on  the  beach. 
What  a  rag!" 

The  two  boys  looked  back  to  the  scene  of  their  descent. 
It  was  a  high  cliff  covered  with  shrubs  and  brambles,  ap- 
parently unassailable.  Before  them  was  the  sea,  pale  blue 
and  gold,  and  to  the  right  and  to  the  left  were  the  flat 
lonely  sands.  They  ran,  shouting  with  excitement,  toward 
the  rippling  tide.  The  sand-hoppers  buzzed  about  their 
ankles:  Hands  tripped  over  a  jelly-fish  and  fell  into  several 
others:   sea-gulls  swooped  above  them,  crying  continually. 

"It's  like  Robinson  Crusoe,"  Michael  declared. 

He  was  mad  with  the  exhilaration  of  possession.  He 
owned  these  sands. 

"Oh,  young  Hands  fell  down  on  the  sands,"  he  cried, 
bursting  into  uncontrollable  laughter  at  the  absurdity  of  the 
rhyme.  Then  he  found  razor-shells  and  waved  his  arms 
triumphantly.  He  found,  too,  wine-stained  shells  and  rosy 
shells  and  great  purple  mussels.  He  and  Hands  took  off 
their  shoes  and  stockings  and  ran  through  the  limpid  water 
that  sparkled  with  gold  and  tempted  them  to  wade  forever 


HOLIDAYS    IN    FRANCE  137 

ankle  deep.  They  reached  a  broken  mass  of  rock  which 
would  obviously  be  surrounded  by  water  at  high  tide;  they 
clambered  up  to  the  summit  and  found  there  grass  and 
rabbits'  holes. 

"It's  a  real  island,"  said  Michael.  "It  is!  I  say,  Hands, 
this  is  our  island.     We  discovered  it.     Bags  I,  we  keep  it." 

"Don't  let's  get  caught  by  the  tide,"  suggested  cautious 
Hands. 

"All  right,  you  funk,"  jeered  Michael. 

They  came  back  to  the  level  sands  and  wandered  on 
toward  the  black  point  of  clifE  bounding  the  immediate 
view. 

"I  say,  there's  a  cave.  I  bet  you  there's  a  cave,"  Michael 
called  to  his  companion,  who  was  examining  a  dead  fish. 

"Wait  a  jiffy,"  shouted  Hands;  but  Michael  hurried  on 
to  the  cave.  He  w^anted  to  be  the  first  to  enter  under  its 
jagged  arch.  Already  he  could  see  the  silver  sand  shimmer- 
ing upon  the  threshold  of  the  inner  darkness.  He  walked 
in,  awed  by  the  secrecy  of  this  sea-cavern,  almost  expectant 
of  a  mermaid  or  octopus  in  the  deepest  cranny.  Suddenly 
he  stopped.  His  heart  beat  furiously:  his  head  swam:  his 
legs  quivered  under  him.  Then  he  turned  and  ran  toward 
the  light. 

"Good  lummy!"  said  Hands,  when  Michael  came  up 
to  him.  "Whatever's  the  matter?  You're  simply  fright- 
fully white." 

"Come  away,"  said  Michael.    "I  saw  something  beastly." 

"What  was  it?" 

"There's  a  man  in  there  and  a  woman.  Oh,  it  was 
beastly." 

Michael  dragged  Hands  by  the  arm,  but  not  before  they 
had  left  th€  cave  far  behind  would  he  speak. 

"What  was  it  really?"  asked  Hands,  when  they  stood  at 

the  bottom  of  the  cliff. 

"I  couldn't  possibly  tell  anybody  ever,"  said  Michael. 
10 


138  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"You're  making  it  up,"  scoffed  Hands. 

"No,  I'm  not,"  said  Michael.  'Took  here,  don't  say 
anything  to  the  others  about  that  cave.     Promise." 

Hands  promised  silence;  and  he  and  Michael  soon  dis- 
covered a  pathway  up  the  cliff.  When  they  reached  the 
garden  it  was  a  deeper  green  than  ever  in  the  falling  twi- 
light, and  they  did  not  care  to  linger  far  from  the  house. 
It  was  a  relief  to  hear  voices  and  to  see  Rutherford,  Har- 
greaves  and  Jubb  still  eating  plums.  Presently  they  played 
games  on  a  lawn  with  Mr.  Vernon  and  Mr.  Lodge,  and 
soon,  after  reading  sleepily  for  a  while  in  the  tumble-down 
room  which  was  set  apart  for  the  boys'  use,  Michael  and 
Hands  went  to  bed  and,  after  an  exciting  encounter  with  a 
bat,  fell  asleep. 

The  days  in  Brittany  went  by  very  swiftly.  In  the  morn- 
ing at  eight  o'clock  there  were  great  bowls  of  cafe-au-lait 
and  rolls  with  honey  and  butter  waiting  in  the  dining-room 
for  the  boys  when  they  came  back  from  bathing.  All  the 
other  boys  except  Michael  had  come  to  France  to  improve 
their  French ;  but  he  worked  also  at  the  first  book  of  Ovid's 
Metamorphoses  and  at  Lucian's  Charon,  because  he  was 
going  in  for  a  scholarship  at  St.  James'.  However,  these 
classical  subjects  were  put  away  at  eleven  o'clock,  when 
dejeuner  with  all  sorts  of  new  and  delicious  dishes  was 
served.  After  this  there  was  nothing  to  do,  until  six  o'clock, 
but  enjoy  oneself.  Sometimes  the  boys  made  expeditions 
into  St.  Corentin,  where  they  wondered  at  the  number  of 
dogs  to  each  inhabitant  and  bought  cakes  and  sweets  at  a 
pastrycook's  and  gas-filled  balloons  which  they  sent  up  in 
the  market-place.  Or  they  would  stroll  down  to  the  quays 
and  watch  the  shipping  and  practice  their  French  on  sailors 
looking  more  like  pirates  than  ordinary  sailors. 

Once,  while  Michael  w^as  gazing  into  a  shop  window  at 
some  dusty  foreign  stamps  in  a  brass  tray,  a  Capuchin  friar 
spoke  to  him  in  very  good  English  and  asked  if  he  collected 


HOLIDAYS    IN    FRANCE  139 

stamps.  Michael  said  that  he  did,  and  the  Capuchin  invited 
him  to  come  back  to  the  convent  and  see  his  collection. 
Michael  thought  this  was  a  splendid  invitation  and  willingly- 
accompanied  the  Capuchin  whom,  except  for  a  sore  on  his 
lip,  he  liked  very  much.  He  thought  the  inside  of  the  con- 
vent was  rather  like  the  inside  of  an  aquarium,  but  he  en- 
joyed the  stamps  very  much.  The  friar  gave  him  about  a 
dozen  of  his  duplicates,  and  Michael  promised  to  write  to 
him  when  he  got  home,  and  to  send  him  some  of  his  own. 
Then  they  had  tea  in  the  friar's  cell,  and  afterwards 
Michael  set  out  to  walk  back  to  St.  Antoine.  It  was  not 
yet  six  o'clock  when  he  reached  the  house,  but  there  was  a 
terrible  fuss  being  made  about  his  adventure.  Telegrams 
had  been  despatched:  the  gendarmerie  had  been  informed, 
and  the  British  Vice-consul  had  been  interviewed.  Mr. 
Vernon  asked  in  his  deepest  voice  where  the  deuce  he  had 
been,  and  when  Michael  told  him  he  had  been  taking  tea 
with  a  monk  Mr.  Vernon  was  more  angry  than  ever. 

"Don't  do  things  like  that.  Good  heavens,  boy,  you 
might  have  been  kidnapped  and  turned  into  a  Catholic,  be- 
fore you  knew  where  you  were.  Hang  it  all,  remember  I'm 
responsible  for  your  safety  and  never  again  get  into  con- 
versation with  a  wandering  monk." 

Michael  explained  about  the  stamps,  but  Mr.  Vernon 
said  that  was  a  very  pretty  excuse,  and  would  by  no  means 
hear  of  Michael  visiting  the  convent  again.  When  Michael 
thought  over  this  fuss  he  could  not  understand  what  it  had 
all  been  about.  He  could  not  imagine  anything  more  harm- 
less than  this  Capuchin  friar  with  the  sore  on  his  lip.  How- 
ever, he  never  did  see  him  again,  except  once  in  the  distance, 
when  he  pointed  him  out  to  Mr.  Vernon,  who  said  he 
looked  a  dirty  ruffian.  Michael  discovered  that  grown-up 
people  always  saw  danger  where  there  was  no  danger,  but 
when,  as  on  the  occasion  when  Hands  and  he  plainly  per- 


140  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

celved  a  ghost  in  the  garden,  there  was  every  cause  for  real 
alarm  they  merely  laughed. 

The  weather  grew  warmer   as  August   moved   on,   and 
Michael  with  Mr.  Vernon  and  Mr.  Lodge  used  sometimes 
to  plunge  into  the  depths  of  the  country,  there  to  construe 
Ovid  and  Lucian  while  the  other  boys  w^orked  at  French 
with   the  Frenchman  who  came  in  from   St.   Corentin  to 
teach  them.     Michael  enjoyed  these  expeditions  with  Mr. 
Vernon  and  Mr.  Lodge.    They  would  sit  down  in  the  lush 
grass  of  a  shady  green  lane,  close  to  a  pool  w^here  the  bull- 
frogs croaked.     Michael  would  construe  the  tale  of  Deu- 
calion and  Pyrrha  to  Mr.  Lodge,  while  Mr.  Vernon  lay  on 
his  back  and  smoked  a  large  pipe.     Then  a  White  Admiral 
butterfly  w^ould  soar  round  the  oak  trees,  and  Ovid  would 
be    thrown    behind    them    like    Deucalion's    stones;     while 
Michael  and  Mr.  Vernon  and  Mr.  Lodge  manoeuvred  and 
shouted  and  ran  up  and  down,  until  the  White  Admiral 
was  either  safely  bottled  with  the  cyanide  of  potassium  or 
soared  aw^ay  out  of  sight.     When  Ovid  was  finished   for 
the  day,  Mr.  Lodge  used  to  light  a  big  pipe  and  lie  on  his 
back,  while  Michael  construed  the  Dialogue  of  Charon  to 
Mr.  Vernon.     Then  an  Oak  Eggar  moth  would  fly  with 
tumbling  reckless  flight  beyond  the  pool,  luring  Michael  and 
Mr.  Lodge  and  Mr.  Vernon  to  charge  through  in  pursuit, 
not  deterred  by  the  vivid  green  slime  of  the  wayside  water 
as  the  ghosts  were  deterred  by  gloomy  Styx.    Indeed,  as  the 
hot  August  days  went  by,  each  one  was  marked  by  its  butter- 
flies more  definitely  than  by  anything  else.    Michael  thought 
that  France  was  a  much  better  place  for  collecting  them 
than  England.     Scarce  Sw^allow-tails  and  ordinary  Swallow- 
tails haunted  the  cliffs  majestically.     Clouded  Yellows  were 
chased  across  the  fields  of  clover.     Purple  Emperors  and 
Camberwell  Beauties  and  Bath  Whites  were  all  as  frequent 
as  Heath  Browns  at  home.     Once,  they  all  went  on  a  long 
expedition  to  Bluebeard's  Castle  on  the  other  side  of  the 


HOLIDAYS    IN    FRANCE  141 

Loire,  and,  while  they  sat  in  a  garden-cafe,  drinking  their 
grenadine  sucree,  hundreds  of  Silver-washed  Fritillaries  ap- 
peared over  the  tables.  How  the  fat  French  bourgeois 
stared  to  see  these  mad  English  boys  chasing  butterflies  in 
their  sunny  bee-haunted  garden.  But  how  lovely  the  Fritil- 
laries looked,  set  upside  down  to  show  their  powdered  green 
and  rosy  wings  washed  by  silver  streaks.  Perhaps  the  most 
exciting  catch  of  all  happened,  close  to  the  shutting  in  of  a 
September  dusk,  in  the  avenue  of  pollarded  acacias. 
Michael  saw  the  moth  first  on  the  lowest  bough  of  a  tree. 
It  was  jet-black  marked  with  thick  creamy  stripes.  Neither 
he  nor  Hands  had  a  net,  and  they  trembled  with  excitement 
and  chagrin.  Michael  threw  a  stone  rather  ineffectively 
and  the  moth  changed  its  position,  showing  before  it  settled 
down  on  a  higher  branch  underwings  of  glowing  vermilion. 

'*Oh,  what  can  it  be?"  Michael  cried,  dancing. 

"It's  frightfully  rare,"  squeaked  Hands. 

"You  watch  it  carefully,  while  I  scoot  for  a  net,"  com- 
manded Michael. 

He  tore  along  up  the  darkening  drive,  careless  of  ghosts 
or  traveling  seamen  bent  on  murder  and  robbery.  He 
rushed  into  the  hall  and  shouted,  "A  terribly  rare  moth  in 
the  drive!  Quick,  my  net!"  and  rushed  back  to  the  vigilant 
Hands.  The  others  followed  and,  after  every  cunning  of 
the  hunter  had  been  tried,  the  moth  was  at  last  secured  and; 
after  a  search  through  Kirby's  Butterflies  and  Moths,  pro- 
nounced to  be  a  Jersey  Tiger,  not  so  rare,  after  all,  in  fact, 
very  common  abroad.  But  it  was  a  glorious  beast  when 
set,  richly  black,  barred  and  striped  with  damasked  cream 
over  a  flame  of  orange-scarlet. 

The  six  weeks  w^ere  over.  Michael  had  to  leave  in  ad- 
vance of  the  others,  in  order  to  enter  for  his  scholarship 
examination  at  St.  James'.  Mr.  Lodge  took  him  to  St. 
Malo  and  handed  him  over  to  the  charge  of  Rutherford's 
older  brother,  who  was  already  at  St.  James'  and  would  see 


142  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 


Michael  safely  to  London.     Michael  could  scarcely  believe 
that  this  Rutherford  was  a  boy,  so  tall  was  he,  such  a  heavy 
black  mustache  had  he  and  so  pleasant  was  he  to  Michael. 
Michael  thought  with  regret  of  the  green  and  golden  days 
in  Brittany,  as  he  waved  to  Mr.  Lodge  standing  on  the  St. 
Malo  jetty.     He  felt,  as  the  steamer  sailed  across  the  glassy 
sea  through  a  thick  September  haze,   that  he  was  coming 
back  to  greater  adventures,  that  he  was  older  and,   as  he 
paced  beside  Rutherford  up  and  down  the  deck,  that  he  was 
more  important.     But  he  thought  with  regret  of  Brittany 
and  squeaky  Hands  and  the  warm  days  of  butterflies.     He 
hoped  to  return  next  year  and  see  again  the  fig  tree  by  his 
bedroom  window  and  the  level  shore  of  the  Loire  estuary 
and   the  tangled   tumble-down  garden  on   the  cliff's  edge. 
He  would  always  think  of  Mr.  Lodge  and  Mr.  Vernon, 
those  very  dearly  loved  schoolmasters.     He  would  think  of 
the  ghostly  Breton  lanes  at  twilight  and  the  glorious  Sun- 
days unspoilt  by  church  or  best  clothes  and  of  the  bullfrogs 
in  the  emerald  pools. 

Michael  disliked  the  examination  very  much  indeed.  He 
hated  the  way  in  which  all  the  other  competitors  stared. 
He  disliked  the  speed  with  which  they  wrote  and  the  easy 
manners  of  some  of  them.  However,  he  gained  his  scholar- 
ship mostly  by  age  marks  and  was  put  in  the  Lower  Third, 
the  youngest  boy  in  the  class  by  two  years,  and  became  a 
Jacobean,  turning  every  morning  round  the  same  gate,  walk- 
ing  every  morning  up  the  same  gravel  path,  running  every 
morning  up  the  same  wide  steps,  meeting  every  morning  the 
same  smell  of  hot-water  pipes  and  hearing  every  day  the 
same  shuffle  of  quick  feet  along  the  corridors  past  the  same 
plaster  cast  of  the  Laocoon. 


BOOK  TWO 
CLASSIC    EDUCATION 


CHAPTER  I 
THE    JACOBEAN 

MICHAEL  found  the  Lower  Third  at  St.  James'  a 
jolly  class.  He  was  so  particularly  young  that 
he  was  called  ''Baby,"  but  with  enough  obvious 
affection  to  make  the  dubious  nickname  a  compliment.  To 
be  sure,  Mr.  Braxted  would  often  cackle  jokes  in  a  raucous 
voice  about  his  age,  and  if  Michael  made  a  false  quantity 
he  would  grumble  and  say  he  was  paid  as  a  schoolmaster 
not  as  a  wet-nurse.  However,  Mr.  Braxted  was  such  a 
dandy  and  wore  such  very  sharply  creased  and  tight  trousers 
and  was  so  well  set  up  and  groomed  that  the  class  was 
proud  of  his  neat  appearance,  and  would  inform  the  Upper 
Third  that  Foxy  Braxted  did,  at  any  rate,  look  a  gentleman, 
a  distinction  which  the  Upper  Third  could  scarcely  claim 
for  their  own  form-master. 

Michael  liked  the  greater  freedom  of  a  public  school. 
There  were  no  home-books  to  be  signed  by  governesses: 
there  was  no  longer  any  taboo  upon  the  revelation  of  Chris- 
tian names.  Idiosyncrasies  were  overlooked  in  the  vaster 
society  of  St.  James'.  The  senior  boys  paid  no  attention  to 
the  juniors,  but  passed  them  by  scornfully  as  if  they  were 
grubs  not  worth  the  trouble  of  squashing.  There  was  no 
longer  the  same  zest  in  the  little  scandals  and  petty  spite- 
fulness  of  a  private  school.  There  was  much  greater  free- 
dom in  the  choice  of  one's  friends,  and  Michael  no  longer 
felt  bound  to  restrict  his  intimacy  to  the  twin  Macalisters 

145 


146  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

and  Norton.  Sometimes  in  the  quarter  (as  the  break  was 
now  called)  Michael  would  stand  on  the  top  of  the  steps 
that  led  down  from  the  great  red  building  into  the  school- 
ground.  From  this  point  he  would  survey  the  huge  green 
field  with  its  archipelago  of  countless  boys.  He  would  think 
how  few  of  their  names  he  knew  and  from  what  distances 
many  of  them  traveled  each  morning  to  school.  He  could 
wander  among  them  by  himself  and  not  one  would  turn  a 
curious  head.  He  was  at  liberty  even  to  stare  at  a  few 
great  ones  whom  athletic  prowess  had  endow^ed  already  with 
legendary  divinity,  so  that  among  small  boys  tales  were  told 
of  their  daring  and  their  immortality  gradually  woven  into 
the  folk-lore  of  St.  James'.  Sometimes  a  member  of  the 
first  fifteen  would  speak  to  Michael  on  a  matter  of  athletic 
business. 

"What's  your  name?" 

"Fane,"  Michael  would  answer,  hoping  the  while  that 
his  contemporaries  might  be  passing  and  see  this  colloquy 
between  a  man  and  a  god. 

"Oh,  yes,"  the  hero  would  carelessly  continue,  "I've  got 
you  down  already.  Mind  you  turn  up  to  Little  Side  at 
1 145  sharp." 

Little  Side  was  the  football  division  that  included  the 
smallest  third  of  the  school.  Sometimes  the  hero  would 
ask  another  question,  as: 

"Do  you  know  a  kid  called  Smith  P.L.?" 
And  Michael  with  happy  blushes  would  be  able  to  point 
out  Smith  P.L.  to  the  great  figure. 

Michael  played  football  on  Little  Side  with  great  regu- 
larity, rushing  home  to  dinner  and  rushing  off  again  to 
change  and  be  in  the  field  by  a  quarter  to  two.  He  could 
run  very  fast,  and  for  that  reason  the  lords  of  Little  Side 
made  him  play  forward,  a  position  for  which  the  slightness 
of  his  body  made  him  particularly  unsuited.  One  day,  how- 
ever, he  managed  to   intercept  a  pass,   to  outwit  a  three- 


THE    JACOBEAN  147 

quarter,  to  dodge  the  full-back  and  to  score  a  try,  plumb 
between  the  posts.  Luckily  one  of  the  heroes  had  strolled 
down  from  Pelion  that  afternoon  to  criticize  Little  Side 
and  Michael  was  promoted  from  the  scram  to  play  three- 
quarter  back  on  the  left  wing,  in  which  position  he  really 
enjoyed  football  very  much  indeed. 

It  fell  out  that  year  that  the  St.  James'  fifteen  was  the 
most  invincible  ever  known  in  the  school's  history,  and 
every  Saturday  afternoon,  when  there  was  a  home  match, 
Michael  in  rain  or  wind  or  pale  autumnal  sunlight  would 
take  up  his  position  in  the  crowd  of  spectators  to  cheer  and 
shout  and  urge  St.  James'  to  another  glorious  victory. 
Match  after  match  that  year  earned  immortal  fame  in  the 
school  records,  sending  the  patriotic  Jacobeans  of  every  size 
and  age  home  to  a  happy  tea  in  the  rainy  twilight.  Those 
were  indeed  afternoons  of  thunderous  excitement.  How 
everybody  used  to  shout — "School — Schoo-oo-ol — Schoo-ol! 
Play  up — Schoo-00-ool !  James !  Ja-a-a-mes !  Oh,  go  low. 
Kick!  Touch!  Forward!  Held!  Offside!  Go  in  your- 
self!    Schoo-ool!" 

How  Michael's  heart  beat  at  the  thud  of  the  Dulford 
forwards  in  their  last  desperate  rush  toward  the  School 
"twenty-five."  Down  went  the  School  halves,  and  over 
them  like  a  torrent  swept  the  Dulford  pack.  Down  went 
the  three-quarters  in  a  plucky  attempt  to  sit  on  the  ball. 
Ah!  There  was  an  unanimous  cry  of  agony,  as  everybody 
pressed  against  the  boundary  rope  and  craned  toward  the 
touchline  until  the  posts  creaked  before  the  strain.  Not  in 
vain  had  those  gallant  three-quarters  been  smeared  with  mud 
and  bruised  by  the  boots  of  the  surging  Dulford  pack;  for 
the  ball  had  been  kicked  on  too  far  and  Cutty  Jackson,  the 
School  back,  had  fielded  it  miraculously.  He  was  going  to 
punt.  "Kick!"  yelled  the  despairing  spectators.  And  Jack- 
son, right  under  the  disappointed  groans  of  the  Dulford 
forwards,  whose  muscles  cracked  with  the  effort  to  fetch 


148  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

him  down,  kicked  the  ball  high,  high  into  the  silvery  No- 
vember air.  Up  with  that  spinning  greasy  oval  traveled 
the  hopes  of  the  onlookers,  and,  as  it  fell  safely  into  touch, 
from  all  round  the  field  rose  like  a  rocket  a  huge  sigh  of 
relief  that  presently  broke  into  volleys  and  paeans  of  exulta- 
tion, as  half-time  sounded  with  St.  James'  a  goal  to  the 
good.  How  Michael  admired  the  exhausted  players  when 
they  sucked  the  sliced  lemons  and  lay  about  in  the  mud; 
how  he  envied  Cutty  Jackson,  when  the  lithe  and  noble 
fellow  leaned  against  the  goalpost  and  surveyed  his  audience. 
"Sidiness"  could  be  easily  forgiven  after  that  never-to-be- 
forgotten  kick  into  touch.  Why,  thought  Michael,  should 
not  he  himself  be  one  day  ranked  as  the  peer  of  Cutty  Jack- 
son? Why  should  not  he,  six  or  seven  years  hence,  pene- 
trate the  serried  forces  of  Dulford  and  score  a  winning  try, 
even  as  the  referee's  whistle  was  lifted  to  sound  "time"? 
Ambition  woke  in  Michael,  while  he  surveyed  upon  that 
muddy  field  the  prostrate  forms  of  the  fifteen,  like  statues 
in  a  museum.  Then  play  began  and  personal  desires  were 
merged  in  the  great  hope  of  victory  for  the  School.  Hardly 
now  could  the  spectators  shout,  so  tense  was  the  struggle, 
so  long  was  each  full  minute  of  action.  Michael's  brain 
swam  with  excitement.  He  saw  the  Dulford  team  as  giants 
bull-necked  and  invulnerable.  He  sav/  the  School  halves 
shrinking,  the  School  three-quarters  shiver  like  grass  and  the 
School  forw^ards  crumple  before  the  Dulford  charges.  They 
were  beaten:  the  untarnished  record  was  broken:  Michael 
could  have  sobbed  for  his  side.  Swifter  than  swallows,  the 
Dulford  three-quarters  flew  down  the  now  all  too  short 
field  of  play.  They  were  in!  Look!  They  were  dancing 
in  triumph.  A  try  to  Dulford!  Disconsolately  the  School 
team  lined  up  behind  their  disgraced  goal.  Jauntily  the 
Dulford  half  walked  away  with  the  shapely  leather.  The 
onlookers  held  their  breath,  as  the  ball,  evilly  accurate, 
dangerously  direct,  was  poised  in  position  for  the  kick  at 


THE    JACOBEAN 149 

goal.  The  signal  was  given:  the  School  team  made  their 
rush:  the  ball  rose  in  the  air,  hung  for  a  moment  motion- 
less, hit  a  goalpost,  quivered  and  fell  back.  One  goal  to  a 
try — five  points  to  three — and  St.  James'  was  leading. 
Then  indeed  did  the  School  play  up.  Then  indeed  did 
every  man  in  the  team  ''go  low":  and  for  the  rest  of  the 
game  to  neither  side  did  any  advantage  incline.  Grunts  and 
muttered  oaths,  the  thud  of  feet,  the  smack  of  wet  leather 
lasted  continually.  In  the  long  line-ups  for  the  throw  in 
from  touch,  each  man  marked  his  man  viciously:  the  sweat 
poured  down  from  hanging  jaws:  vests  w^ere  torn,  knees 
were  grimed  with  mud  and  elbows  were  blackened.  The 
scrimmages  w^re  the  tightest  and  neatest  ever  watched,  and 
neither  scrum  could  screw  the  other  a  foot.  At  last  the 
shrill  whistle  of  the  referee  proclaimed  the  end  of  an  im- 
mortal contest.  There  were  cheers  for  the  victors  by  the 
vanquished,  by  the  vanquished  for  their  conquerors.  The 
spectators  melted  away  into  the  gathering  mist  and  rain,  a 
flotsam  of  black  umbrellas.  In  a  few  moments  the  school- 
ground  was  desolate  and  silent.  Michael,  as  he  looked  at 
the  grass  plowed  into  mud  by  the  severe  struggle,  thought 
what  superb  heroes  were  in  his  School  team;  and  just  as 
he  was  going  home,  content,  he  saw  a  blazer  left  on  a  post. 
It  was  Jackson's,  and  Michael,  palpitating  with  the  honor, 
ran  as  fast  as  he  could  to  the  changing-room  through  the 
echoing  cloister  beneath  the  school. 

"I  say,  Jackson,  you  left  this  on  the  ground,"  he  said 
shyly. 

Jackson  looked  up  from  a  conversation  with  the  Dulford 
full-back. 

"Oh,  thanks  very  much,"  he  murmured,  and  went  on 
with  his  talk. 

Michael  would  not  have  missed  that  small  sentence  for 
any  dignity  in  the  world. 

During  his  first  term  at  St.  James',   Michael  went  on 


ISO  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

with  his  study  of  the  art  of  dancing,  begun  during  the 
previous  winter  without  much  personal  satisfaction  and  with 
a  good  deal  of  self-consciousness.  These  dancing  lessons 
took  place  in  the  hall  at  Randell's,  and  Michael  revisited 
his  old  school  with  a  new  confidence.  He  found  himself 
promoted  to  stay  beyond  the  hour  of  pupilage  in  order 
pleasantly  to  pass  away  a  second  hour  by  dancing  formally 
with  the  sisters  and  cousins  of  other  boys.  He  had  often 
admired  last  year  those  select  Jacobeans  who,  buttoning 
white  gloves,  stood  in  a  supercilious  group,  while  their 
juniors  clumped  through  the  Ladies'  Chain  uninspired  by 
the  swish  of  a  single  petticoat.  Now  he  was  of  their  sacred 
number.  It  was  not  surprising  that  under  the  influence  of* 
the  waltz  and  the  Circassian  circle  and  the  schottische  and 
the  quadrille  and  the  mazurka  Michael  should  fall  in 
love.  He  was  not  anxious  to  fall  in  love:  many  times  to 
other  boys  he  had  mocked  at  woman  and  dilated  upon  the 
folly  of  matrimony.  He  had  often  declared  on  his  way  to 
and  from  school  that  celibacy  should  be  the  ideal  of  every 
man.  He  used  to  say  how  little  he  could  understand  the 
habit  of  sitting  in  dark  corners  and  kissing.  Even  Miss 
Carthew  he  grew  accustomed  to  treat  almost  with  rudeness, 
lest  some  lynx-eyed  friend  of  his  should  detect  in  his  relation 
with  her  a  tendency  toward  the  sentimental.  However, 
Muriel  in  her  salmon-colored  accordion-pleated  frock 
bowled  Michael  off  his  superior  pedestal.  He  persuaded 
himself  that  this  was  indeed  one  of  those  unchangeable 
passions  of  which  he  read  or  rather  did  read  now.  This 
great  new  emotion  was  certainly  Love,  for  Michael  could 
honestly  affirm  that  as  soon  as  he  saw  Muriel  sitting  on  a 
chair  with  long  black  legs  outstretched  before  her  he  loved 
her.  No  other  girl  existed  and,  when  he  moved  toward 
her  for  the  pleasure  of  the  next  dance,  he  felt  his  heart 
beating,  his  cheeks  on  fire.  Muriel  seemed  to  like  him  after 
a  fashion.     At  any  rate,  she  cordially  supported  him  in  a 


THE    JACOBEAN 151 

project  of  long-deferred  revenge  upon  Mr.  Macrae  of  the 
Upper  Fourth  at  Randell's,  and  she  kept  "cave"  while 
Michael  tried  the  door  of  his  empty  class-room  ofE  the  top 
gallery  of  the  hall.  It  was  unlocked,  and  Michael  crept  in 
and  quickly  threw  the  contents  of  Mr.  Macrae's  desk  out 
of  the  window  and  wrote  on  the  blackboard:  "Mr.  Macrae 
is  the  silliest  ass  in  England."  Then  he  and  Muriel  walked 
demurely  back  to  join  the  tinkling  mazurka  down  below 
and,  though  many  inquiries  were  set  on  foot  as  to  the  per- 
petrator of  the  outrage,  Michael  was  never  found  out. 

Michael's  passion  for  Muriel  increased  with  every  evening 
of  her  company,  and  he  went  so  far  as  to  make  friends  with 
a  very  unpopular  boy  who  lived  in  her  road,  for  the  sake  of 
holding  this  unpopular  boy  in  close  conversation  by  his 
threshold  on  the  chance  of  seeing  Muriel's  gray  muff  in 
the  twilight.  Muriel  w^as  strangely  cold  for  the  heroine 
of  such  a  romance,  and  indeed  Michael  only  once  saw  her 
really  vivacious,  which  was  when  he  gave  her  a  catapult. 
Yet  sometimes  she  would  make  a  clandestine  appointment 
and  talk  to  him  for  twenty  minutes  in  a  secluded  terrace, 
so  that  he  consoled  himself  with  a  belief  in  her  untold 
affection.  Michael  read  Don  Quixote  again  on  account  of 
Dulcinea  del  Toboso,  and  he  was  greatly  moved  by  the 
knight's  apostrophes  and  declamations.  He  longed  for  a 
confidant  and  was  half  inclined  to  tell  Stella  about  Muriel; 
but  when  he  came  to  the  point  Stella  was  engrossed  in  a  new 
number  of  Little  Folks  and  Michael  feared  she  was  un- 
worthy of  such  a  trust.  The  zenith  of  his  passion  was 
attained  at  the  Boarders'  dance  to  which  he  and  Muriel 
and  even  Stella  were  invited.  Michael  had  been  particularly 
told  by  Miss  Carthew  that  he  was  to  dance  four  times  at 
least  with  Stella  and  never  to  allow  her  to  be  without  a 
partner.  He  was  in  despair  and  felt,  as  he  encountered 
the  slippery  floor  with  Stella  hanging  nervously  on  his  arm, 
that  round  his  neck  had  been  tied  a  millstone  of  responsi- 


152  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

bility.  There  in  a  corner  was  Muriel,  exquisite  in  yellow- 
silk,  and  in  her  hair  a  yellow  bow.  Boys  flitted  round  her, 
like  bees  before  a  hive,  and  here  was  he  powerless  with  this 
wretched  sister. 

"You  wait  here,"  said  Michael.     "I'll  be  back  in  half  a 

jiffy." 

"Oh,  no,"  pouted  Stella.  "You're  not  to  leave  me  alone, 
Michael.     Miss  Carthew  said  you  were  to  look  after  me." 

Michael  groaned. 

"Do  you  like  ices?"  he  asked  desperately.  "You  do, 
don't  you?" 

"No,"  said  Stella.     "They  make  my  tooth  ache." 

Michael  almost  wept  with  chagrin.  He  had  planned  to 
swap  with  Stella  for  unlimited  ices  all  her  dances  with  him. 
Then  he  saw  a  friend  whom  he  caught  hold  of,  and  with 
whom  he  whispered  fiercely  for  a  moment. 

"I  say,  you  might  dance  with  my  kiddy  sister  for  a  bit. 
She's  awfully  fond  of  ices,  so  you  needn't  really  dance." 

The  friend  said  he  preferred  to  remain  independent  at 
a  dance. 

"No,  I  say,  do  be  a  decent  chap,"  begged  Michael.  "Just 
dance  with  her  once  and  get  another  chap  to  dance  with  her 
after  you've  had  your  shot.  Oh,  do.  Look  here.  What'll 
you  swap  for  the  whole  of  her  program?" 

The  friend  considered  the  proposition  in  its  commercial 
side. 

"Look  here,"  Michael  began,  and  then,  as  he  nervously 
half  turned  his  head,  he  saw  the  crowd  thickening  about 
Muriel.  He  waved  his  arm  violently  in  the  hope  that  she 
would  realize  his  plight  and  keep  the  rivals  at  arm's  length. 
"Look  here,"  he  went  on,  "you  know  my  bat  with  the 
whalebone  splice?"  This  bat  was  Michael's  most  precious 
possession  and,  even  as  he  bartered  it  for  love,  he  smelt 
the  fragrant  linseed-oil  of  the  steeped  bandages  which  now 
preserved  it  for  summer  suns. 


THE   JACOBEAN 153 

The  friend's  eyes  twinkled  greedily. 

"ril  swap  that  bat,"  said  Michael,  "if  you'll  make  sure 
my  kiddy  sister  hasn't  got  a  single  empty  place  on  her  pro- 
gram all  the  dance." 

"All  right,"  said  the  friend.  And,  as  he  was  led  up  to 
Stella,  Michael  whispered  hurriedly,  when  the  introduction 
had  been  decorously  made: 

"This  chap's  frightfully  keen  on  you,  Stella.  He  simply 
begged  me  to  introduce  him  to  you." 

Then  from  the  depths  of  Michael's  soul  a  deep-seated 
cunning  inspired  him  to  add: 

"I  wouldn't  at  first,  because  he  was  awfully  in  love  with 
another  girl,  and  I  thought  it  hard  cheese  on  her,  because 
she's  here  to-night.  But  he  said  he'd  go  home  if  he  didn't 
dance  with  you.    So  I  had  to." 

Michael  looked  inquiringly  at  Stella,  marked  the  smirk 
of  satisfaction  on  her  lips,  then  recklessly,  almost  sliding 
over  the  polished  floor,  he  plunged  through  Muriel's  suitors 
and  proffered  his  program.  They  danced  together  nearly 
all  the  evening,  and  alas,  Muriel  told  him  that  she  was 
going  to  boarding  school  next  term.  It  was  a  blow  to 
Michael,  and  the  dance  program  with  Muriel's  name 
fourteen  times  repeated  was  many  times  looked  at  with 
sentimental  pangs  each  night  of  next  term  before  Michael 
went  to  bed  a  hundred  miles  away  from  Muriel  at  her 
boarding  school. 

However,  Muriel  and  her  porcelain-blue  eyes  and  the  full 

bow  of  her  lips  and  the  slimness  and  girlishness  of  her  were 

forgotten  in  the  complexities  of  life  at  a  great  public  school. 

Michael  often  looked  back  to  that  first  term  in  the  Lower 

Third  as  a  period  of  Arcadian  simplicity,  a  golden  age.     In 

his  second  term  Michael,  after  an  inconspicuous  position  in 

the  honest  heart  of  the  list,  was  not  moved  up,  for  which 

he  was  very  glad,  as  the  man  who  took  the  Upper  Third 
11 


154  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

was  by  reputation  a  dull  driver  without  any  of  the  amenities 
by  which  Foxy  Braxted  seasoned  scholastic  life. 

One  morning,  when  the  Lower  Third  had  been  pleasantly 
dissolved  in  laughter  by  Foxy's  caustic  jokes  at  the  expense 
of  a  boy  who  had  pronounced  the  Hebrides  as  a  dissyllable, 
following  a  hazardous  guess  that  the  capital  of  New  South 
Wales  was  New  York,  the  door  of  the  classroom  opened 
abruptly  and  Dr.  Brownjohn  the  Headmaster  sailed  in. 

"Is  there  a  boy  called  Fane  in  this  class?"  he  demanded 
deeply. 

The  laughter  had  died  away  when  the  tip  of  Dr.  Brown- 
john's  nose  glistened  round  the  edge  of  the  door,  and  in  the 
deadly  silence  Michael  felt  himself  withering  away. 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Mr.  Braxted,  cheerfully  indicating 
Michael  with  his  long  forefinger. 

"Tell  him  to  pack  up  his  books  and  go  to  Mr.  Spivey  in 
the  Hall.  I'll  see  him  there,"  rumbled  Dr.  Brownjohn  as, 
after  transfixing  the  Lower  Third  with  a  glance  of  the  most 
intense  ferocity,  he  swung  round  and  left  the  room,  slam- 
ming the  door  behind  him. 

"You'd  better  take  what  you*re  doing  to  Mr.  Spivey," 
said  Mr.  Braxted  in  his  throatiest  voice,  "and  tell  him  with 
my  compliments  you're  an  idle  young  rascal.  You  can  get 
your  books  at  one  o'clock." 

Michael  gathered  together  pens  and  paper,  and  left  his 
desk  in  the  Lower  Third. 

"Good-bye,  sir,"  he  said  as  he  went  away,  for  he  knew 
Foxy  Braxted  really  rather  liked  him. 

"Good-bye,"  cackled  his  late  form-master. 

The  Lower  Third  followed  his  exit  from  their  midst 
with  an  united  grin  of  farewell,  and  Michael  was  presently 
interviewing  Mr.  Spivey  in  the  Hall.  He  realized  that  he 
was  now  a  member  of  that  assorted  Purgatory,  the  Special, 
doomed  to  work  there  for  a  term  of  days  or  weeks,  and  after 
this  period  of  intensive  culture  to  be  planted  out  in  a  higher 


THE   JACOBEAN 155 

form  beyond  the  ordinary  mechanics  of  promotion.  Mostly 
in  the  Special  class  Michael  worshipped  the  two  gods  « 
and  eav,  and  his  whole  life  was  devoted  to  the  mastery  of 
Greek  conditional  sentences  in  their  honor. 

The  Special  form  at  St.  James'  never  consisted  of  more 
than  fourteen  or  fifteen  boys,  all  of  whom  were  taught 
individually,  and  none  of  whom  knew  when  they  would  be 
called  away.  The  Special  was  well  called  Purgatory. 
Every  morning  and  every  afternoon  the  inmates  toiled  away 
at  their  monotonous  work,  sitting  far  removed  from  one 
another  in  the  great  echoing  hall,  concentrated  for  the  most 
part  on  It  and  lav.  Every  morning  and  every  afternoon 
at  a  fatal  moment  the  swinging  doors  of  the  lower  end  of 
the  Hall  would  clash  together,  and  the  heavy  tread  of  Dr. 
Brownjohn  would  be  heard  as  he  rolled  up  one  of  the  two 
aisles  between  the  long  desks.  Every  morning  and  every 
afternoon  Dr.  Brownjohn  would  sit  beside  some  boy  to 
inspect  his  work,  and  every  morning  and  every  afternoon 
hearts  would  beat  the  faster,  until  Dr.  Brownjohn  had 
seized  his  victim,  when  the  other  boys  would  simultaneously 
work  with  an  almost  lustful  concentration. 

Dr.  Brownjohn  was  to  Michael  the  personification  of 
majesty,  dominion,  ferocity  and  awe.  He  was  huge  of  build, 
with  a  long  gray  beard  to  which  adhered  stale  morsels  of 
food  and  the  acrid  scent  of  strong  cigars.  His  face  was 
plowed  and  fretted  with  indentations  volcanic:  scoriae 
torrents  flowed  from  his  eyes,  his  forehead  was  seared  and 
cleft  with  frowning  crevasses  and  wrinkled  with  chasms. 
His  ordinary  clothes  were  stained  with  soup  and  rank  with 
tobacco  smoke,  but  over  them  he  wore  a  full  and  swishing 
gown  of  silk.  When  he  spoke  his  voice  rumbled  in  the 
titanic  deeps  of  his  body,  or  if  he  were  angry  it  burst  forth 
in  an  appalling  roar  that  shook  the  great  hall.  His  method 
of  approach  was  enough  to  frighten  anyone,  for  he  would 
swing  along  up  the  aisle  and  suddenly  plunge  into  a  seat 


is6  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

beside  the  chosen  boy,  pushing  him  along  the  form  with  his 
black  bulk.  He  would  seize  the  boy's  pen,  and  after 
scratching  his  own  head  with  the  end  of  the  holder,  would 
follow  w^ord  by  word  the  liturgy  of  «  and  lav,  tapping 
the  paper  between  the  lines  as  he  read  each  sentence,  so 
that  at  the  end  of  his  examination  the  page  was  peppered 
w^ith  dots  of  ink.  Dr.  Brownjohn,  although  he  had  a 
voice  like  ten  bulls,  was  himself  very  deaf,  and  after  bel- 
lowing in  a  paralyzing  bass  he  would  always  finish  a  re- 
mark with  an  intoned  *'um?"  of  tenor  interrogation  to 
exact  assent  or  answer  from  his  terrified  pupil.  When  due 
reverence  was  absent  from  Michael's  worship  of  It  and 
€ax,  Dr.  Brownjohn  would  frown  at  him  and  roar  and 
bellow  and  rumble  and  thunder  and  peal  his  execration  and 
contempt.  Then  suddenly  his  fury  would  be  relieved  by 
this  eruption,  and  he  would  affix  his  initials  to  the  bottom 
of  the  page — S.C.B. — standing  for  Samuel  Constantine 
Brownjohn,  after  which  endorsement  he  would  pat 
Michael's  head,  rumble  an  unintelligible  joke  and  plunge 
down  beside  another  victim. 

One  of  Michael's  greatest  trials  was  his  inability  to  con- 
vince Miss  Carthew  how  unutterably  terrific  Dr.  Brown- 
john really  was.  She  insisted  that  Michael  exaggerated  his 
appearance  and  manners,  and  simply  would  not  believe  the 
stories  Michael  told  of  parents  and  guardians  who  had 
trembled  with  fear  when  confronted  by  the  Old  Man.  In 
many  ways  Michael  found  Miss  Carthew  was  very  con- 
tentious nowadays,  and  very  seldom  did  an  evening  pass 
without  a  hot  argument  betw^een  him  and  her.  To  be  sure, 
she  used  to  say  it  was  Michael  who  had  grown  contradic- 
tory and  self-assertive,  but  Michael  could  not  see  that  he 
had  radically  altered  since  the  first  moment  he  saw  Miss 
Carthew,  now  nearly  four  years  ago. 

Michael's  purgatory  in  the  Special  continued  for  several 
weeks,   and  he  grew  bored   by  the  monotony  of  his  work 


THE   JACOBEAN 157 

that  was  only  interrupted  by  the  suspense  of  the  Head- 
master's invasions.  Sometimes  Dr.  Brownjohn  would  make 
his  dreadful  descent  early  in  the  "hour,"  and  then,  relieved 
from  the  necessity  to  work  with  such  ardor,  Michael  would 
gaze  up  to  the  raftered  roof  of  the  hall  and  stare  at  the 
long  lancet  windows  filled  with  the  coats  of  arms  in  stained 
glass  of  famous  bygone  Jacobeans.  He  would  wonder 
whether  in  those  windows  still  unfilled  a  place  would  one 
day  be  found  for  his  name  and  whether  years  and  years 
hence  boys  doing  Greek  conditional  sentences  would  specu- 
late upon  the  boyhood  of  Charles  Michael  Saxby  Fane. 
Then  Mr.  Spivey  would  break  into  his  dreams  with  some 
rather  dismal  joke,  and  Michael  would  make  blushing 
amends  to  It  and  eav  by  writing  as  quickly  as  he  could 
three  complete  conditional  sentences  in  honor  and  praise  of 
the  twin  gods.  Mr.  Spivey,  the  master  in  charge  of  the 
Special,  was  mild  and  good-humored.  No  one  could  fail 
to  like 'him,  but  he  was  not  exhilarating;  and  Michael  was 
greatly  pleased  when  one  morning  Mr.  Spivey  informed 
him  that  he  was  to  move  into  the  Shell.  Michael  was  glad 
to  dodge  the  Upper  Third,  for  he  knew  that  life  in  the 
Shell  under  Mr.  Neech  would  be  an  experience. 

Chaps  had  often  said  to  Michael,  "Ah,  wait  till  you  get 
into  old  Neech's  form." 

"Is  he  decent?"  Michael  would  inquire. 

"Some  chaps  like  him,"  the  chaps  in  question  would 
ambiguously  reply. 

When  Mr.  Spivey  introduced  Michael  to  the  Shell,  Mr. 
Neech  was  sitting  in  his  chair  with  his  feet  on  the  desk  and 
a  bandanna  handkerchief  over  his  face,  apparently  fast  asleep. 
The  inmates  of  the  Shell  were  sitting,  vigorously  learning 
something  that  seemed  to  cause  them  great  hardship;  for 
every  face  was  puzzled,  and  from  time  to  time  sighs  floated 
upon  the  classroom  air. 

Mr.   Spivey  coughed  nervously  to   attract  Mr.   Neech's 


158  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

attention,  and  when  Mr.  Neech  took  no  notice  he  tapped 
nervously  on  the  desk  with  Mr.  Neech's  ruler.  Somewhere 
in  the  back  row  of  desks  a  titter  of  mirth  was  faintly 
audible.  Mr.  Neech  was  presumably  aroused  w4th  great 
suddenness  by  Mr.  Spivey's  tapping  and  swung  his  legs  off 
the  desk  and,  sitting  bolt  upright  in  his  chair,  glared  at  the 
intruders. 

"Oh,  the  Headmaster  has  sent  Fane  from  the  Special," 
Mr.  Spivey  nervously  explained. 

Mr.  Neech  threw  his  eyes  up  to  the  ceiling  and  looked 
as  if  Michael's  arrival  wxre  indeed  the  last  straw. 

"Twenty-six  miserable  boj's  are  already  having  a  detest- 
able and  stultifying  education  in  this  wretched  class," 
lamented  Mr.  Neech.  "And  now  comes  a  twenty-seventh. 
Very  well.  Very  well.  I'll  stuff  him  with  the  abominable 
jargon  and  filthy  humbug.  I'll  cram  him  w^ith  the  un- 
digested balderdash.  Oh,  you  unhappy  boy,"  Mr.  Neech 
went  on,  directly  addressing  Michael.  "You  unfortunate 
imp  and  atom.  Sit  down,  if  you  can  find  a  desk.  Sit  down 
and  fill  your  mind  with  the  ditchwater  I'm  paid  to  teach 
you." 

Mr.  Spivey  had  by  this  time  reached  the  door,  and  with 
a  nervous  nod  he  abruptly  vanished. 

"Now  then,  everybody,"  said  Mr.  Neech,  closing  his  lips 
very  tightly  in  a  moment's  pause  and  then  breaking  forth 
loudly.  "You  have  had  one  quarter  of  an  hour  to  learn 
the  repetition  you  should  all  have  learned  last  night.  Begin, 
that  mooncalf  with  a  dirty  collar,  the  boy  Wilberforce,  and 
if  any  stupid  stoat  or  stockfish  boggles  over  one  word  I'll 
flay  him.  Begin!  The  boy  Fane  can  sit  still.  The  others 
stand  up!"  shouted  Mr.  Neech.  "Now  the  boy  Wilber- 
force ! 

"Tityre  tu  patulae  recubans  sub  tegmine  fagi 

"Go  on,  you  bladder  of  idiocy." 


THE    JACOBEAN  159 

Michael  watched  the  boy  Wilberforce  concentrate  all  his 
faculties  upon  not  making  a  single  mistake,  and  hoped  that 
he  would  satisfy  this  alarming  master.  While  Wilberforce 
spoke  the  lines  of  the  Eclogue,  panting  between  each  hex- 
ameter, Mr.  Neech  strode  up  and  down  the  room  with  his 
arms  crossed  behind  him,  wagging  the  tail  of  his  gown. 
Sometimes  he  would  strike  his  chin  and,  looking  upward, 
murmur  to  himself  the  lines  with  an  expression  of  profound 
emotion.  Wilberforce  managed  to  get  through,  and  another 
boy  called  Verney  took  up  the  Eclogue  successfully,  and  so 
on  through  the  class  it  was  successfully  sustained. 

"You  pockpuddings,  you  abysmal  apes,"  Mr.  Neech 
groaned  at  his  class.  "Why  couldn't  you  have  learned  those 
lines  at  home?  You  idle  young  blackguards,  you  pestilent 
oafs,  you  fools  of  the  first  water,  write  them  out.  Write 
them  out  five  times." 

"Oh,  sir,"  the  Shell  protested  in  unison. 

"Oh,  sir!"  Mr.  Neech  mimicked.  "Oh,  sir!  Well,  I'll 
let  you  off  this  time,  but  next  time,  next  time,  my  stars  and 
garters,  I'll  flog  any  boy  that  makes  a  single  mistake." 

Mr.  Neech  was  a  dried-up  snuflF-colored  man,  with  a 
long  thin  nose  and  stringy  neck  and  dark  piercing  eyes.  He 
always  wore  a  frock-coat  green  with  age  and  a  very  old  top- 
hat  and  very  shiny  trousers.  He  read  Spanish  newspapers 
and  second-hand-book  catalogs  all  the  way  to  school,  and 
was  never  seen  to  walk  with  either  a  master  or  a  boy.  His 
principal  hatreds  were  Puseyism  and  actors;  but  as  two 
legends  were  extant,  in  one  of  which  he  had  been  seen  to 
get  into  a  first-class  railway  carriage  with  a  copy  of  the 
Church  Times  and  in  the  other  of  which  he  had  been  seen 
smoking  a  big  cigar  in  the  stalls  of  the  Alhambra  Theater, 
it  was  rather  doubtful  whether  his  two  hatreds  were  as 
deeply  felt  as  they  were  fervently  expressed.  He  was  re- 
puted to  have  the  largest  library  in  England  outside  the 
British  Museum  and  also  to  own  seven  Dachshunds.    He  w^as 


i6o  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

a  man  who  fell  into  ungovernable  rages,  when  he  would  flog 
a  boy  savagely  and,  the  flogging  done,  fling  his  cane  out  of 
the  window  in  a  fit  of  remorse.  He  would  set  impositions 
of  unprecedented  length,  and  revile  himself  for  ruining  the 
victim's  handwriting.  He  would  keep  his  class  in  for  an 
hour  and  mutter  at  himself  for  a  fool  to  keep  himself  in  as 
well.  Once,  he  locked  a  boy  in  at  one  o'clock,  and  the 
boy's  mother  wrote  a  long  letter  to  complain  that  her  son 
had  been  forced  to  go  without  his  dinner.  Legend  said 
that  Mr.  Neech  had  been  reprimanded  by  Dr.  Brownjohn 
on  account  of  this,  which  explained  Mr.  Neech 's  jibes  at 
the  four  pages  of  complaint  from  the  parents  that  were 
supposed  inevitably  to  follow  his  mildest  rebuke  of  the  most 
malignant  boy. 

Michael  enjoyed  Mr.  Neech's  eccentricities  after  the 
drabness  of  the  Special.  He  was  lucky  enough  to  be  in 
Mr.  Neech's  good  graces,  because  he  was  almost  the  only 
boy  who  could  say  in  what  novel  of  Dickens  or  Scott  some 
famous  character  occurred.  Mr.  Neech  had  a  conception 
of  education  quite  apart  from  the  mere  instilling  of  declen- 
sions and  genders  and  "num"  and  "nonne"  and  *'quin"  and 
€t  and  lav.  He  taught  Geography  and  English  History 
and  English  Literature,  so  far  as  the  school  curriculum 
allowed  him.  Divinity  and  English  meant  more  to  Mr. 
Neech  than  a  mere  hour  of  Greek  Testament  and  a  pedant's 
fiddling  with  the  text  of  Lycidas.  Michael  had  a  dim 
appreciation  of  his  excellence,  even  in  the  Shell:  he  identi- 
fied him  in  some  way  with  Tom  Brown's  Schooldays,  with 
prints  of  Eton  and  Westminster,  with  Miss  Carthew's  tales 
of  her  brother  on  the  Britannia.  Michael  recognized  him 
as  a  character  in  those  old  calf-bound  books  he  loved  to 
read  at  home.  Once  Mr.  Neech  called  a  boy  a  dog-eared 
Rosinante,  and  Michael  laughed  aloud,  and  when  fiercely 
Mr.  Neech  challenged  him,  denying  he  had  ever  heard  of 
Rosinante,    Michael   soon   showed   that  he   had   read    Don 


THE    JACOBEAN  i6i 

Quixote  with  some  absorption.  After  that  Mr.  Neech  put 
Michael  in  one  of  the  favored  desks  by  the  window  and 
would  talk  to  him,  while  he  warmed  his  parchment-covered 
hands  upon  the  hot-water  pipes.  Mr.  Neech  was  probably 
the  first  person  to  impress  Michael  with  the  beauty  of  the 
past  or  rather  to  give  him  an  impetus  to  arrange  his  own 
opinions.  Mr.  Neech,  lamenting  the  old  days  long  gone, 
thundering  against  modernity  and  denouncing  the  whole 
system  of  education  that  St.  James'  fostered,  was  almost 
the  only  schoolmaster  with  a  positive  personality  w^hom 
Michael  ever  encountered.  Michael  had  scarcely  realized, 
until  he  reached  the  Shell,  in  what  shadowy  dates  of  history 
St.  James'  was  already  a  famous  school.  Now  in  the  vul- 
garity of  its  crimson  brick,  in  the  servility  with  which  it 
truckled  to  bourgeois  ideals,  in  the  unimaginative  utility  it 
worshiped,  Michael  vaguely  apprehended  the  loss  of  a  soul. 
He  would  linger  in  the  corridors,  reading  the  lists  of  dis- 
tinguished Jacobeans,  and  during  Prayers  he  would  with 
new  interest  speculate  upon  the  lancet  windows  and  their 
stained-glass  heraldry,  until  vaguely  in  his  heart  grew  a 
patriotism  more  profound  than  the  mere  joy  of  a  football 
victory,  a  patriotism  that  submerged  Hammersmith  and 
Kensington  and  made  him  proud  that  he  himself  was  ver- 
itably a  Jacobean.  He  was  still  just  as  eager  to  see  St. 
James*  defeat  Dulford  at  cricket,  just  as  proud  to  read  that 
St.  James'  had  won  more  open  scholarships  at  the  Univer- 
sities than  some  North-country  grammar  school ;  but  at  the 
same  time  he  was  consoled  in  the  event  of  defeat  by  pride 
in  the  endurance  of  his  school  through  so  many  years  of 
English  History. 

It  was  about  this  time  that  Michael  saw  in  a  second-hand 
shop  a  print  of  the  tower  of  St.  Mary's  College,  Oxford. 
It  was  an  old  print  and  the  people,  small  as  emmets,  who 
thronged  the  base  of  that  slim  and  lovely  tower,  were 
dressed   in   a  bygone   fashion   that  very   much   appealed   to 


1 62  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Michael.  This  print  gave  him  the  same  thrill  he  experi- 
enced in  listening  to  Mr.  Neech's  reminiscences  or  in  read- 
ing Don  Quixote  or  in  poring  over  the  inscriptions  of 
famous  Jacobeans.  Michael  had  already  taken  it  as  an 
axiom  that  one  day  he  would  go  to  Oxford,  and  now  he 
made  up  his  mind  he  would  go  to  St.  Mary's  College.  At 
this  moment  people  were  hurrying  past  that  tower,  even  as 
they  hurried  in  this  gray  print  and  even  as  Michael  himself 
would  one  day  hurry.  Meanwhile,  he  was  enjoying  the 
Shell  and  Mr.  Neech's  eccentricities  and  the  prospect  of 
winning  the  Junior  Form  Cricket  Shield,  a  victory  in  which 
Michael  would  participate  as  scorer  for  the  Shell. 

Summer  suns  shone  down  upon  the  green  playground  of 
St.  James',  rippling  with  flanneled  forms.  The  radiant  air 
was  filled  with  merry  cries,  with  the  sounds  of  bat  and  ball, 
with  boyhood  in  action.  In  the  great  red  mass  of  the  school 
buildings  the  golden  clock  moved  on  through  each  day's 
breathless  hour  of  cricket.  The  Junior  Shield  was  won  by 
the  Shell,  and  the  proud  victors,  after  a  desperate  argument 
with  Mr.  Neech,  actually  persuaded  him  to  take  his  place 
in  the  commemorative  photograph.  School  broke  up  and 
the  summer  holidays  began. 


CHAPTER   II 
THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE 

MICHAEL,  although  Stella  was  more  of  a  tie  than 
a  companion,  was  shocked  to  hear  that  she  would 
not  accompany  Miss  Carthew  and  himself  to 
Eastbourne  for  the  summer  holidays.  He  heard  with  a 
recurrence  of  the  slight  jealousy  he  had  always  felt  of  Stella 
that,  though  she  was  not  yet  eleven  years  old,  she  was  going 
to  Germany  to  live  in  a  German  family  and  study  music. 
To  Michael  this  step  seemed  a  device  to  spoil  Stella  beyond 
the  limits  of  toleration,  and  he  thought  with  how  many  new 
affectations  Stella  would  return  to  her  native  land.  More- 
over, why  should  Stella  have  all  the  excitement  of  going 
abroad  and  living  abroad  while  her  brother  plodded  to 
school  in  dull  ordinary  London?  Michael  felt  very  strongly 
that  the  balance  of  life  was  heavily  weighted  in  favor  of 
girls  and  he  deplored  the  blindness  of  grown-up  people 
unable  to  realize  the  greater  attractiveness  of  boys.  It  was 
useless  for  Michael  to  protest,  although  he  wasted  an  even- 
ing of  Henty  in  arguing  the  point  with  Miss  Carthew. 
Stella  became  primed  with  her  own  importance  before  she 
left  England,  and  Michael  tried  to  discourage  her  as  much 
as  he  could  by  pointing  out  that  in  Germany  her  piano- 
playing  would  be  laughed  at  and  by  warning  her  that  her 
so  evident  inclination  to  show  off  would  prejudice  against 
her  the  bulk  of  Teutonic  opinion.  However,  Michael's 
well-meant  discouragement  did  not  at  all  abash  Stella,  who 

163 


1 64  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

under  his  most  lugubrious  prophecies  trilled  exasperatlngly 
cheerful  scales  or  ostentatiously  folded  unimportant  articles 
of  clothing  with  an  exaggerated  carefulness,  the  while  she 
fussed  with  her  hair  and  threw  conceited  glances  over  her 
shoulder  into  the  mirror.  Then,  one  day,  the  bonnet  of  a 
pink  and  yellow  Fraulein  bobbed  from  a  cab-window,  and, 
after  a  finale  of  affectation  and  condescension  on  the  front- 
door steps  for  the  benefit  of  passers-by,  Stella  set  out  for 
Germany  and  Michael  turned  back  into  the  house  with 
pessimistic  fears  for  her  future.  The  arrangements  for 
Stella's  transportation  had  caused  some  delay  in  Michael's 
holidays  and,  as  a  reward  for  having  been  forced  to  endure 
the  sight  of  Stella  going  abroad,  he  was  told  that  he  might 
invite  a  friend  to  stay  with  him  at  Eastbourne  during  the 
remainder  of  the  time.  Such  an  unexpected  benefaction 
made  Michael  incredulous  at  first. 

''Anyone  I  like?"  he  said.  "For  the  whole  of  the  hols? 
Good  lord,  how  ripping." 

Forthwith  he  set  out  to  consider  the  personal  advantages 
of  all  his  friends  in  turn.  The  Macalisters  as  twins  were 
ruled  out;  besides,  of  late  the  old  intimacy  w^as  wearing 
thin,  and  Michael  felt  there  were  other  chaps  w^ith  more 
claim  upon  him.  Norton  w^as  ruled  out,  because  it  would 
be  the  worst  of  bad  form  to  invite  him  without  the  Mac- 
alisters and  also  because  Norton  was  no  longer  on  the 
Classical  side  of  St.  James'.  Suddenly  the  idea  of  asking 
Merivale  to  stay  with  him  occurred  like  an  inspiration. 
Merivale  was  not  at  present  a  friend  w^ith  anything  like  the 
pretensions  of  Norton  or  the  Macalisters.  Merivale  could 
not  be  visualized  in  earliest  Randell  days,  indeed  he  had 
been  at  a  different  private  school,  and  it  was  only  during 
this  last  summer  term  that  he  and  Michael  had  taken  to 
walking  arm  in  arm  during  the  "quarter."  Merivale  turned 
to  the  left  when  he  came  out  of  school  and  Michael  turned 
to  the  right,  so  that  they  never  met  on  their  way  nor  walked 


THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE      165 

home  together  afterwards.  Nevertheless,  in  the  course  of 
the  term,  the  friendship  had  grown,  and  once  or  twice 
Michael  and  Merivale  had  sat  beneath  the  hawthorn  trees, 
between  them  a  stained  bag  of  cherries  in  the  long  cool 
grass,  while  intermittently  they  clapped  the  boundary  hits 
of  a  school  match  that  was  clicking  drowsily  its  progress 
through  the  summer  afternoon.  Tentative  confidences  had 
been  exchanged,  and  by  reason  of  its  slower  advance  toward 
intimacy  the  friendship  of  Michael  and  Merivale  seemed 
built  on  a  firmer  basis  than  most  of  the  sudden  affinities  of 
school  life.  Now,  as  Michael  recalled  the  personality  of 
Merivale  with  his  vivid  blue  eyes  and  dull  gold  hair  and 
his  laugh  and  freckled  nose  and  curiously  attractive  walk, 
he  had  a  great  desire  for  his  company  during  the  holidays. 
Miss  Carthew  was  asked  to  write  to  Mrs.  Merivale  in 
order  to  give  the  matter  the  weight  of  authority;  but 
Michael  and  Miss  Carthew  went  off  to  Eastbourne  before 
the  answer  arrived.  The  sea  sparkled,  a  cool  wind  blew 
down  from  Beachy  Head;  the  tamarisks  on  the  front  quiv- 
ered ;  Eastbourne  was  w^onderful,  so  wonderful  that  Michael 
could  not  believe  in  the  probability  of  Merivale,  and  the 
more  he  thought  about  it  the  more  he  felt  sure  that  Mrs. 
Merivale  w^ould  write  a  letter  of  polite  refusal.  However, 
as  if  they  w^re  all  people  in  a  book,  everything  happened 
according  to  Michael's  most  daringly  optimistic  hopes. 
Mrs.  Merivale  wrote  a  pleasant  letter  to  Miss  Carthew  to 
say  that  her  boy  Alan  was  just  now  staying  at  Brighton 
with  his  uncle  Captain  Ross,  that  she  had  written  to  her 
brother  who  had  written  back  to  say  that  Alan  and  he  would 
move  on  to  Eastbourne,  as  it  did  not  matter  a  bit  to  him 
where  he  spent  the  next  w^eek.  Mrs.  Merivale  added  that, 
if  it  were  convenient,  Alan  might  stay  on  with  Michael 
when  his  uncle  left.  By  the  same  post  came  a  letter  from 
Merivale  himself   to  say   that  he  and   his  uncle   Kenneth 


1 66  YOUTffS    ENCOUNTER 

were  arriving  next  day,  and  that  he  jolly  well  hoped  Fane 
was  going  to  meet  him  at  the  railway  station. 

Michael,  much  excited,  waited  until  the  train  steamed  in 
with  its  blurred  line  of  carriage  window^s,  from  one  of  which 
Merivale  w^as  actually  leaning.  Michael  waved :  Merivale 
waved:  the  train  stopped:  Merivale  jumped  out:  a  tall 
man  w^ith  a  very  fair  mustache  and  close-cropped  fair  hair 
alighted  after  Merivale  and  was  introduced  and  shook  hands 
and  made  several  jokes  and  was  on  terms  of  equality  before 
he  and  Merivale  and  Michael  had  got  into  the  blue-lined 
fly  that  was  to  drive  them  to  Captain  Ross's  hotel.  During 
the  few  days  of  Captain  Ross's  stay,  he  and  Michael  and 
Merivale  and  Miss  Carthew  w^ent  sailing  and  climbed  up 
Beachy  Head  and  watched  a  cricket  match  in  Devonshire 
Park  and  generally  behaved  like  all  the  other  summer  vis- 
itors to  Eastbourne.  Michael  noticed  that  Captain  Ross 
was  very  polite  to  Miss  Carthew  and  heard  with  interest 
that  they  both  had  many  friends  in  common — soldiers  and 
sailors  and  Royal  Marines.  Michael  listened  to  a  great 
deal  of  talk  about  "when  I  was  quartered  there"  and  'Svhen 
he  was  stationed  at  Malta"  and  about  Gunners  and  Sappers 
and  the  Service.  He  himself  spoke  of  General  Mace  and 
was  greatly  flattered  when  Captain  Ross  said  he  knew  him 
by  reputation  as  a  fine  old  soldier.  Michael  was  rather  dis- 
appointed that  Captain  Ross  was  not  in  the  Bengal  Lancers, 
but  he  concluded  that,  next  to  being  in  the  Bengal  Lancers, 
it  was  best  to  be  with  him  in  the  Kintail  Highlanders  (the 
Duke  of  Clarence's  own  Inverness-shire  Buffs). 

"Uncle  Ken  looks  jolly  ripping  in  a  kilt,"  Merivale  in- 
formed Miss  Carthew,  when  on  the  last  evening  of  Captain 
Ross's  stay  they  were  all  sitting  in  the  rubied  light  of  the 
hotel  table. 

"Shut  up,  showman,"  said  Captain  Ross,  banging  his 
nephew  on  the  head  with  a  Viennese  roll. 


THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE      167 

"Oh,  I  say,  Uncle  Kenneth,  that  loaf  hurts  most  aw- 
fully," protested  Merivale. 

"Well,  don't  play  Barnum,"  said  the  Captain  as  he 
twirled  his  little  mustache.     "It's  not  done,  my  lad." 

When  Captain  Ross  went  away  next  morning,  Miss 
Carthew,  at  his  earnest  invitation,  accompanied  the  boys  to 
see  him  off,  and,  as  they  walked  out  of  the  station,  Merivale 
nudged  Michael  to  whisper: 

"I  say,  I  believe  my  uncle's  rather  gone  on  Miss 
Carthew." 

"Rot,"  said  Michael.     "Why,  she'd  be  most  frightfully 

annoyed.     Besides,   chaps'   uncles  don't   get   gone  on " 

Michael  was  going  to  add  "chaps'  sisters'  governesses,"  but 
somehow  he  felt  the  remark  was  all  wrong,  and  blushed 
the  conclusion  of  the  sentence. 

The  weather  grew  very  hot,  and  Miss  Carthew  took  to 
sitting  in  a  canvas  chair  and  reading  books  on  the  beach, 
so  that  Michael  and  Merivale  were  left  free  to  do  very 
much  as  they  wanted,  which,  as  Michael  pointed  out,  was 
rather  decent  of  her. 

"I  say,  Merivale,"  Michael  began  one  day,  as  he  and  his 
friend,  arm  in  arm,  were  examining  the  credentials  of  the 
front  on  a  shimmering  morning,  "I  say,  did  you  notice  that 
Miss  Carthew  called  you  Alan?" 

"I  know.    She  often  does,"  replied  Merivale. 

"I  say,  Merivale,"  said  Michael  shyly,  "supposing  I  call 
you  Alan  and  you  call  me  Michael — only  during  the  hols, 
of  course,"  he  added  hastily. 

"I  don't  mind,"  Alan  agreed. 

"Because  I  suppose  there  couldn't  be  two  chaps  more 
friends  than  you  and  me,"  speculated  Michael. 

"I  like  you  more  than  I  do  any  other  chap,"  said  Alan 

simply. 

"So  I  do  you,"  said  Michael.     "And  it's  rather  decent 


1 68  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

just  to  have  one  great  friend  who  you  call  by  his  Christian 
name." 

After  this  Michael  and  Alan  became  very  intimate  and 
neither  held  a  secret  from  the  other,  as  through  the  crowds 
of  seaside  folk  they  threaded  their  way  along  the  promenade 
to  whatever  band  of  minstrels  had  secured  their  joint  devo- 
tion. They  greatly  preferred  the  Pierrots  to  the  Niggers, 
and  very  soon,  by  a  week's  unbroken  attendance  at  the  three 
daily  sessions,  Michael  and  Alan  knew  the  words  and  music 
of  most  of  the  repertory.  Of  the  comic  songs  they  liked 
best  The  Dandy  Colored  Coon,  although  they  admired 
almost  equally  a  duet  whose  refrain  was: 

We  are  a  couple  of  barmy  chaps,  hush,  not  a  word! 

A  little  bit  loose  in  our  tiles,  perhaps,  hush,  not  a  word! 

We're  lunatics,   lunatics,   everybody  declares 

We're  a  couple  of  fellows  gone  wrong  in  our  bellows, 

As  mad  as  a  pair  of  March  hares. 

Gradually,  however,  and  more  especially  under  the  influ- 
ence of  Japanese  lanterns  and  a  moon-splashed  sea,  Michael 
and  Alan  avowed  openly  their  fondness  for  the  more  serious 
songs  sung  by  the  Pierrettes.  The  words  of  one  song  in 
particular  were  by  a  reiteration  of  passionate  utterance 
deeply  printed  on  their  memory: 

Two  little  girls  in  blue,  lad, 
Two  little  girls  in  blue, 
They  were  sisters,  we  were  brothers, 
And  learnt  to  love  the  two. 

And  one  little  girl  in  blue,  lad, 

Who  won  your  father's  heart, 

Became  your  mother:    I  married  the  other, 

But  we  have  drifted  apart. 

This  lyric  seemed  to  Michael  and  Alan  the  most  pro- 
foundly moving  accumulation  of  words  ever  known.  The 
sad  words  and  poignant  tune  wrung  their  hearts  with  the 


THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE      169 

tears  always  imminent  in  life.  This  lyric  expressed  for  the 
two  boys  the  incommunicable  aspirations  of  their  most  sacred 
moments.  As  they  leaned  over  the  rail  of  the  promenade 
and  gazed  down  upon  the  pretty  Pierrette,  whose  tremolo 
made  the  night  air  vibrant  with  emotion,  Michael  and  Alan 
were  moved  by  a  sense  of  fleeting  time,  by  thoughts  of  old 
lovers  and  by  an  intense  self-pity. 

"It's  frightfully  decent,  isn't  it?"  murmured  Michael. 

"Ripping,"  sighed  Alan.  "I  wish  I  could  give  her  more 
than  a  penny." 

"So  do  I,"  echoed  Michael.  "It's  beastly  being  without 
much  tin." 

Then  "Encore,"  they  both  shouted  as  the  Pierrette  receded 
from  the  crimson  lantern-light  into  obscurity.  Again  she 
sang  that  song,  so  that  w^hen  Michael  and  Alan  looked  sol- 
emnly up  at  the  stars  they  became  blurred.  They  could  not 
bear  The  Dandy  Colored  Coon  on  such  a  night,  and,  seeing 
no  chance  of  luring  Pierrette  once  more  into  the  lantern- 
light,  they  pushed  their  way  through  the  crowd  of  listeners 
and  walked  arm  in  arm  along  the  murmurous  promenade. 

"It's  beastly  rotten  to  go  to  bed  at  a  quarter  past  nine," 
Michael  declared. 

"We  can  talk  up  in  our  room,"  suggested  Alan. 

"I  vote  we  talk  about  the  Pierrots,"  said  Michael,  affec- 
tionately clasping  his  chum's  arm. 

"Yes,  I  vote  we  do  too,"  Alan  agreed. 

The  next  day  the  Pierrots  were  gone.  Apparently  they 
had  had  a  quarrel  with  the  Corporation  and  moved  farther 
along  the  South  Coast.  Michael  and  Alan  were  dismayed, 
and  in  their  disgust  forsook  the  beach  for  the  shrubberies 
of  Devonshire  Park,  where,  in  gloomy  by-ways,  laurel- 
shaded,  they  spoke  quietly  of  their  loss. 

"I  wonder  if  we  shall   ever  see   that  girl   again,"   said 
Michael.     "I'd  know  her  anywhere.     If  I  was  grown  up 
I'd  know  her.     I  swear  I  would." 
12 


170  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

"She  was  a  clinker,"  Alan  regretted. 

"I  don't  suppose  we  shall  ever  see  a  girl  half  as  pretty," 
Michael  thought. 

"Not  by  a  long  chalk,"  Alan  agreed.  "I  don't  suppose 
there  is  a  girl  anyw^here  in  the  world  a  quarter  as  pretty. 
I  think  that  girl  was  simply  fizzing." 

They  paced  the  mossy  path  in  silence  and  suddenly  round 
a  corner  came  upon  a  bench  on  which  were  seated  two  girls 
in  blue  dresses.  Michael  and  Alan  found  the  coincidence  so 
extraordinary  that  they  stared  hard,  even  when  the  two  girls 
put  their  heads  down  and  looked  sidelong  and  giggled  and 
thumped  each  other  and  giggled  again. 

"I  say,  are  you  laughing  at  us?"  demanded  Michael. 

"Well,  you  looked  at  us  first,"  said  the  fairer  of  the  two 
girls. 

In  that  moment  Michael  fell  in  love. 

"Come  away,"  whispered  Alan.  "They'll  follow  us  if 
we  don't." 

"Do  you  think  they're  at  all  decent?"  asked  Michael. 
"Because,  if  you  do,  I  vote  we  talk  to  them.  I  say,  Alan, 
do  let's  anj^vvay,  for  a  lark." 

"Supposing  anyone  we  know  saw  us?"  queried  Alan. 

"Well,  we  could  say  something,"  Michael  urged.  He 
was  on  fire  to  prosecute  this  adventure  and,  lest  Alan  should 
still  hold  back,  he  took  from  his  pocket  a  feverish  bag  of 
satin  pralines  and  boldly  offered  them  to  the  girl  of  his 
choice. 

"I  say,  would  you  like  some  tuck?" 

The  girls  giggled  and  sat  closer  together;  but  Michael 
still  proffered  the  sweets  and  at  last  the  girl  whom  he 
admired  dipped  her  hand  into  the  bag.  As  all  the  satin 
pralines  were  stuck  together,  she  brought  out  half  a  dozen, 
and  was  so  much  embarrassed  that  she  dropped  the  bag, 
after  which  she  giggled. 

"It  doesn't  matter  a  bit,"  said  Michael.     "I  can  get  some 


THE   QUADRUPLE   INTRIGUE      171 

more.  These  are  beastly  squashed.  I  say,  what's  your 
name?" 

So  began  the  quadruple  intrigue  of  Dora  and  Winnie  and 
Michael  and  Alan. 

Judged  merely  by  their  dress,  one  would  have  unhesitat- 
ingly set  down  Dora  and  Winnie  as  sisters;  but  they  were 
unrelated  and  dressed  alike  merely  to  accentuate,  as  girl 
friends  do,  the  unanimity  of  their  minds.  They  were  both 
of  them  older  by  a  year  or  more  than  Michael  and  Alan; 
while  in  experience  they  were  a  generation  ahead  of  either. 
The  possession  of  this  did  not  prevent  them  from  giggling 
foolishly,  and  from  time  to  time  looking  at  each  other  with 
an  expression  compounded  of  interrogation  and  shyness. 
Michael  objected  to  this  look,  inasmuch  as  it  implied  their 
consciousness  of  a  mental  attitude  in  which  neither  he  nor 
Alan  had  any  part.  He  was  inclined  to  be  sulky  when- 
ever he  noticed  an  exchange  of  glances,  and  very  soon  in- 
sisted upon  a  temporary  separation  by  which  he  and  Dora 
took  one  path,  while  Alan  with  Winnie  pursued  another. 

Dora  was  a  neatly  made  child,  and  Michael  thought  the 
many-pleated  blue  skirt  that  reached  down  to  her  knees,  and 
showing  as  she  swung  along  a  foam  of  frizzy  white  petti- 
coats, very  lovely.  He  liked,  too,  the  curve  of  her  leg  and 
the  high  buttoned  boots  and  the  big  blue  bow  in  her  curly 
golden  hair.  He  admired  immensely  her  large  shady  hat 
trimmed  with  cornflowers  and  the  string  of  bangles  on  her 
wrist  and  her  general  effect  of  being  almost  grown  up  and 
at  the  same  time  still  obviously  a  little  girl.  As  for  Dora's 
face,  Michael  found  it  beautiful  with  the  long-lashed  blue 
eyes  and  rose-leaf  complexion  and  cleft  chin  and  pouting 
bow  mouth.  Michael  congratulated  himself  upon  securing 
the  prettier  of  the  two.  Winnie  with  her  gray  eyes  and 
ordinary  hair  and  dark  eyebrows  and  waxen  skin  was  cer- 
tainly not  comparable  to  this  exquisite  doll  of  his  own. 

At  first  Michael  was  too  shy  to  make  any  attempt  to  kiss 


172  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Dora.  Nevertheless  the  kissing  of  her  ran  in  his  mind  from 
the  beginning,  and  he  would  lie  awake  planning  how  the 
feat  was  to  be  accomplished.  He  was  afraid  that  if  suddenly 
he  threw  his  arms  round  her  she  might  take  offense  and 
refuse  to  see  him  again.     Finally  he  asked  Alan's  advice. 

"I  say,  have  you  ever  kissed  Winnie  ?"  he  called  from  his 
bed. 

Through  the  darkness  came  Alan's  reply: 

"Rather  not.     I  say,  have  you?" 

"Rather  not."  Then  Michael  added  defiantly,  "But  I 
jolly  well  wish  I  had." 

"She  wouldn't  let  you,  would  she?" 

"That's  what  I  can't  find  out,"  Michael  said  despon- 
dently. "I've  held  her  hand  and  all  that  sort  of  rot,  and 
I've  talked  about  how  pretty  I  think  she  is,  but  it's  beastly 
difficult.  I  say,  you  know,  I  don't  believe  I  should  ever  be 
able  to  propose  to  a  girl — you  know — a  girl  you  could 
marry — a  lady.  I'm  tremendously  gone  on  Dora  and  so  are 
you  on  Winnie.  But  I  don't  think  they're  ladies,  because 
Dora's  got  a  sister  who's  in  a  pantomime  and  wears  tights, 
so  you  see  I  couldn't  propose  to  her.  Besides,  I  should 
feel  a  most  frightful  fool  going  down  on  my  knees  in  the 
path.  Still  I  must  kiss  her  somehow.  Look  here,  Alan, 
if  you  promise  faithfully  you'll  kiss  Winnie  to-morrow, 
when  the  clock  strikes  twelve,  I'll  kiss  Dora.  Will  you? 
Be  a  decent  chap  and  kiss  Winnie,  even  if  you  aren't  beastly 
keen,  because  I  am.     So  will  you,  Alan?" 

There  was  a  minute's  deliberation  by  Alan  in  the  darkness, 
and  then  he  said  he  would. 

"I  say,  you  are  a  clinker,  Alan.    Thanks  most  awfully." 

Michael  turned  over  and  settled  himself  down  to  sleep, 
praying  for  the  good  luck  to  dream  of  his  little  girl  in  blue. 

On  the  next  morning  Alan  and  Michael  eyed  each  other 
bashfully  across  the  breakfast  table,  conscious  as  they  were 
of  the  guilty  vow  not  yet  fulfilled.     Miss  Carthew  tried  in 


THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE      173 

vain  to  make  them  talk.  They  ate  in  silence,  oppressed  with 
resolutions.  They  saw  Winnie  and  Dora  in  Devonshire 
Park  at  eleven  o'clock,  and  presently  went  their  different 
ways  along  the  mazy  paths.  Michael  talked  of  subjects 
most  remote  from  love.  He  expounded  to  Dora  the 
ranks  of  the  British  Army;  he  gave  her  tips  on  birds'- 
nesting;  he  told  her  of  his  ambition  to  join  the  Bengal 
Lancers  and  he  boasted  of  the  exploits  of  the  St.  James' 
Football  Fifteen.  Dora  giggled  the  minutes  away,  and  at 
five  minutes  to  twelve  they  were  on  a  seat,  screened  against 
humanity's  intrusion.  Michael  listened  with  quickening 
pulses  to  the  thump  of  tennis  balls  in  the  distance.  At 
last  he  heard  the  first  stroke  of  twelve  and  looked  appre- 
hensively toward  Dora.  Four  more  strokes  sounded,  but 
Michael  still  delayed.  He  wondered  if  Alan  would  keep 
his  promise.  He  had  heard  no  scream  of  dismay  or  startled 
giggle  from  the  shrubbery.  Then  as  the  final  stroke  of 
midday  crashed  forth,  he  flung  his  arms  round  Dora,  pressed 
her  to  him  and  in  his  confusion  kissed  very  roughly  the 
tilted  tip  of  her  nose. 

"Oh,  you  cheek!"  she  gasped. 

Then  Michael  kissed  her  lips,  coldly  though  they  were 
set  against  his  love. 

"I  say,  kiss  me,"  he  whispered,  with  a  strange  new  excite- 
ment crimsoning  his  cheeks  and  rattling  his  heart  so  loudly 
that  he  w^ondered  if  Dora  noticed  anything. 

"Shan't!"  murmured  Dora. 

"Do." 

"Oh,  I  couldn't,"  she  said,  wriggling  herself  free.  "You 
have  got  a  cheek.     Fancy  kissing  anyone." 

"Dora,  I'm  frightfully  gone  on  you,"  affirmed  Michael, 
choking  with   the  emotional  declaration.     "Are  you   gone 


on  me: 


?" 


"I  like  you  all  right,"  Dora  confessed. 

"Well  then,  do  kiss  me.     You  might.     Oh,   I  say,  do." 


174  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

He  leaned  over  and  sought  those  unresponsive  lips  that, 
mutely  cold,  met  his.  He  spent  a  long  time  trying  to 
persuade  her  to  give  way,  but  Dora  protested  she  could  not 
understand  why  people  kissed  at  all,  so  silly  as  it  was. 

"But  it's  not,"  Michael  protested.  "Or  else  everybody 
wouldn't  want  to  do  it." 

However,  it  was  useless  to  argue  with  Dora.  She  was 
willing  to  put  her  curly  golden  head  on  his  shoulder,  until 
he  nearly  exploded  with  sentiment;  she  seemed  not  to  mind 
how  often  he  pressed  his  lips  to  hers;  but  all  the  time  she 
was  passive,  inert,  drearily  unresponsive.  The  deeper  she 
seemed  to  shrink  within  herself  and  the  colder  she  stayed, 
the  more  Michael  felt  inclined  to  hurt  her,  to  shake  her 
roughly,  almost  to  draw  blood  from  those  soft,  lifeless  lips. 
Once  she  murmured  to  him  that  he  was  hurting  her,  and 
Michael  w^as  In  a  quandary  between  an  overwhelming  soft- 
ness of  pity  and  an  exultant  desire  to  make  her  cry  out 
sharply  with  pain.  Yet  as  he  saw  that  golden  head  upon  his 
shoulder,  the  words  and  tune  of  Two  Little  Girls  In  Blue 
throbbed  on  the  air,  and  with  an  aching  fondness  Michael 
felt  his  eyes  fill  with  tears.  Such  love  as  his  for  Dora  could 
never  be  expressed  with  the  eloquence  and  passion  it  de- 
manded. 

Michael  and  Alan  had  tacitly  agreed  to  postpone  all 
discussion  of  their  passionate  adventure  until  the  blackness 
of  night  and  secret  intimacy  of  their  bedroom  made  the 
discussion  of  it  possible. 

"I  say,  I  kissed  Dora  this  morning,"  announced  Michael. 

"So  did  I  Winnie,"  said  Alan. 

"She  wouldn't  kiss  me,  though,"  said  Michael. 

"Wouldn't  she?"  Alan  echoed  in  surprise.  "Winnie  kissed 
me. 

"She   didn't!"   exclaimed   Michael. 

"She  did,  I  swear  she  did.     She  kissed  me  more  than  I 


THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE      175 

kissed  her.  I  felt  an  awful  fool.  I  nearly  got  up  and  walked 
away.     Only  I  didn't  like  to." 

"Good  lord,"  apostrophized  Michael.  He  was  staggered 
by  Alan's  success  and  marveled  that  Alan,  who  was  admit- 
tedly less  clever  than  himself,  should  conquer  when  he  had 
failed.  He  could  not  understand  the  reason;  but  he  sup- 
posed that  Dora,  being  so  obviously  the  prettier,  was 
deservedly  the  more  difficult  to  win.  However,  Michael 
felt  disinclined  to  pursue  the  subject,  because  it  was  plain 
that  Alan  took  no  credit  to  himself  for  his  success,  and  he 
wished  still  to  be  the  leader  in  their  friendship.  He  did 
not  want  Alan  to  feel  superior  in  anything. 

The  next  day  Miss  Carthew  was  laid  up  in  bed  with  a 
sick  headache,  so  that  Michael  and  Alan  were  free  to  take 
Dora  and  Winnie  upon  the  promenade  without  the  risk  of 
detection.  Accordingly,  when  they  met  in  Devonshire 
Park,  Michael  proposed  this  public  walk.  He  was  the  more 
willing  to  go,  because,  since  Alan's  revelation  of  Winnie, 
he  took  a  certain  pleasure  in  denying  to  her  the  attraction 
of  Alan's  company.  Winnie  was  not  very  anxious  for  the 
walk,  but  Dora  seemed  highly  pleased,  and,  Dora  being  the 
leader  of  the  pair,  Winnie  had  to  give  way.  While  they 
strolled  up  and  down  the  promenade  in  a  row,  Dora  pointed 
out  to  Michael  and  Alan  in  how  many  respects  they  both 
failed  to  conform  to  the  standards  of  smartness,  as  she  con- 
ceived them.  For  instance,  neither  of  them  carried  a  stick 
and  neither  of  them  wore  a  tie  of  any  distinction.  Dora 
called  their  attention  to  the  perfectly  dressed  youths  of 
the  promenade  with  their  high  collars  and  butterfly  ties 
and  Wanghee  canes  and  pointed  boots  and  vivid  waistcoats. 

After  the  walk  the  boys  discussed  Dora's  criticism  and 
owned  that  she  was  right.  They  marshaled  their  money 
and  bought  made-up  bow-ties  of  purple  and  pink  that  were 
twisted  round  the  stud  with  elastic  and  held  in  position 
by  a  crescent  of  whalebone.     They  bought  made-up  white 


176  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

silk  knotted  ties  sown  with  crimson  fleurs-de-lys  and  impaled 
with  a  permanent  brass  horseshoe.  They  spent  a  long  time 
in  the  morning  plastering  back  their  hair  with  soap  and 
water,  while  in  the  ribbons  of  their  straw  hats  they  pinned 
inscribed  medallions.  Finally  they  purchased  Wanghee 
canes  and  when  they  met  their  two  little  girls  in  blue  the 
latter  both  averred  that  Michael  and  Alan  were  much 
improved. 

Miss  Carthew  remained  ill  for  two  or  three  days;  so 
Michael  and  Alan  were  able  to  display  themselves  and  their 
sweethearts  all  the  length  of  the  promenade.  They  took 
to  noticing  the  cut  of  a  coat  as  it  went  by  and  envied  the 
pockets  of  the  youths  they  met;  they  envied,  too,  the 
collars  that  surrounded  the  adolescent  neck,  and  wished 
the  time  had  come  for  them  to  wear  "chokers."  Sometimes, 
before  they  undressed,  they  would  try  to  pin  round  their 
necks  stiff  sheets  of  note-paper  in  order  to  gauge,  however 
slightly,  the  effect  of  high  collars  on  their  appearance. 

The  weather  was  now  steadily  fine  and  hot,  and  Michael 
begged  Miss  Carthew  to  let  him  and  Alan  buy  two  blazers 
and  cricket  belts.  Somev/hat  to  his  surprise,  she  made  no 
objection,  and  presently  Michael  and  Alan  appeared  upon 
the  front  in  white  trousers,  blue  and  yellow  blazers  and 
cherry-colored  silk  belts  fastened  in  front  by  a  convenient 
metal  snake.  Dora  thought  they  looked  "all  right,"  and, 
as  Miss  Carthew  had  succumbed  again  to  her  headache, 
Michael  and  Alan  were  free  to  swagger  up  and  down  on  the 
melting  asphalt  of  the  promenade.  Miss  Carthew  grew  no 
better,  and  one  day  she  told  the  boys  that  Nancy  was  coming 
down  to  look  after  them.  Michael  did  not  know  whether 
he  were  really  glad  or  not,  because,  fond  as  he  was  of  Nancy, 
he  was  deeply  in  love  with  Dora  and  he  had  a  feeling  that 
Nancy  would  interfere  with  the  intrigues.  In  the  end, 
as  it  happened,  Nancy  arrived  by  some  mistake  on  the  day 
before  she  was  expected  and,  setting  forth  to  look  for  the 


THE   QUADRUPLE   INTRIGUE      177 

boys,  she  walked  straight  into  them  arm  in  arm  with  Dora 
and  Winnie.  Michael  was  very  much  upset,  and  told  the 
girls  to  scoot,  a  command  which  they  obeyed  by  rushing 
across  the  road,  giggling  loudly,  standing  on  the  opposite 
curb  and  continuing  to  giggle. 

"Hullo,"  said  Nancy,  "who  are  your  young  friends  in 
blue  cashmere?" 

Michael  blushed  and  said  quickly  they  were  friends  of 
Alan,  but  Alan  would  not  accept  the  responsibility. 

"Well,  I  don't  admire  your  taste,"  said  Nancy  con- 
temptuously. "No,  and  I  don't  admire  your  get-up,"  she 
went  on.  "Did  you  pick  those  canes  up  on  the  beach, 
what?" 

"We  bought  them,"  said  Michael,  rather  affronted. 

"My  goodness,"  said  Nancy.  "What  dreadful-looking 
things.  I  say,  Michael,  you're  in  a  fair  way  toward  looking 
like  a  thorough  young  bounder.  Don't  you  come  to  Cobble 
Place  with  that  button  on  your  hat.  Well,  don't  let  me 
disturb  you.  Cut  off  to  the  Camera  Obscura  with  Gertie 
and  Evangeline.  I  don't  expect  I'm  smart  enough  for  you 
two." 

"We  don't  particularly  want  to  go  with  those  girls," 
said  Michael,  looking  down  at  his  boots,  very  red  and  biting 
his  under-lip.     Alan  was  blushing  too  and  greatly  abashed. 

"Well,"  said  the  relentless  Nancy,  "it's  a  pity  you  don't 
black  your  faces,  for  I  never  saw  two  people  look  more 
like  nigger  minstrels.  Where  did  you  get  that  tie?  No 
wonder  my  sister  feels  bad.  That  belt  of  yours,  Michael, 
would  give  a  South  Sea  Islander  a  headache.  Go  on,  hurry 
off  like  good  little  boys,"  she  jeered.  "Flossie  and  Cissie 
are  waiting  for  you.'* 

Michael  could  not  help  admitting,  as  he  suffered  this 
persiflage  from  Nancy,  that  Dora  and  Winnie  did  look  rather 
common,  and  he  wished  they  would  not  stand  almost  within 


178  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

earshot,  giggling  and  prodding  each  other.  Then  suddenly 
Michael  began  to  hate  Dora  and  the  quadruple  intrigue 
was  broken  up. 

"I  say,  Alan,"  he  said,  looking  up  again,  "let's  bung 
these  sticks  into  the  sea.    They're  rotten  sticks." 

Alan  at  once  threw  his  as  far  as  it  would  go  and  bet 
Michael  he  would  not  beat  the  distance.  So  Michael's 
stick  followed  its  companion  into  oblivion.  Nancy  was  great 
sport,  after  all,  as  both  boys  admitted,  and  when  Michael 
grazed  his  finger  very  slightly  on  a  barnacled  rock  he  ban- 
daged it  up  with  his  silk  tie.  Very  soon  he  discovered  the 
cut  was  not  at  all  serious,  but  he  announced  the  tie  was 
spoilt  and  dipped  it  casually  into  a  rock  pool,  where  it 
floated  blatantly  among  the  anemones  and  rose-plumed 
seaweed.  Alan's  tie  vanished  less  obtrusively ;  no  one  noticed 
when  or  where.  As  for  the  buttons  inscribed  w^th  mottoes 
they  became  insignificant  units  in  the  millions  of  pebbles 
on  the  beach. 

Nancy  was  great  sport  and  ready  to  do  whatever  the  boys 
suggested  in  the  way  of  rock-climbing  and  walking  provided 
they  would  give  her  due  notice,  so  that  she  could  get  into 
a  hockey  skirt  and  thick  shoes.  They  had  fine  blowy  da3's 
with  Nancy  up  on  Beachy  Head  above  the  sparkling  blue 
water.  They  caught  many  blue  butterflies,  but  never  the 
famous  Mazarin  blue  which  legend  in  the  butterfly-book 
said  had  once  been  taken  near  Eastbourne. 

Michael  and  Alan,  even  in  the  dark  privacy  of  their  room, 
did  not  speak  again  of  Dora  and  Winnie.  Michael  had  an 
idea  that  Alan  had  always  been  ashamed  of  the  business, 
and  felt  mean  when  he  thought  how  he  had  openly  told 
Nancy  that  they  were  his  friends.  Once  or  twice,  when 
Michael  was  lying  on  his  back,  staring  up  at  the  sky  over 
Beachy  Head,  the  wind  lisping  round  him  sadly  made  him 
feel  sentimental,  but  sentimental  in  a  dominion  where  Dora 


THE    QUADRUPLE    INTRIGUE      179 


and  Winnie  were  unknown,  where  they  would  have  been 
regarded  as  unpleasant  intruders.  Up  here  in  the  daisy's 
eye,  the  two  little  girls  in  blue  seemed  tawdry  and  took 
their  place  in  the  atmosphere  of  Michael's  earlier  childhood 
with  Mrs.  Frith's  tales  and  Annie's  love-letters.  For 
Michael  the  whole  affair  now  seemed  like  the  half-remem- 
bered dreams  which,  however  pleasant  at  the  time,  repelled 
him  in  the  recollection  of  them.  Moreover,  he  had  experi- 
enced a  sense  of  inequality  in  his  passion  for  Dora.  He  gave 
all;  she  returned  nothing.  Looking  back  at  her  now  under 
the  sailing  clouds,  he  thought  her  nose  was  ugly,  her  mouth 
flabby,  her  voice  odious  and  her  hair  beastly.  He  blushed 
at  the  memory  of  the  ridiculous  names  he  had  called  her, 
at  the  contemplation  of  his  enthusiastic  praise  of  her  beauty 
to  Alan.  He  was  glad  that  Alan  had  been  involved,  however 
unwillingly.  Otherwise  he  was  almost  afraid  he  would  have 
avoided  Alan  in  future,  unable  to  bear  the  injury  to  his 
pride.  This  sad  sensation  promoted  by  the  wind  in  the 
grasses,  by  the  movement  of  the  clouds  and  the  companion- 
ship of  Alan  and  Nancy,  was  more  thrilling  than  the  Pier- 
rette's tremolo  in  the  lantern  light.  Michsiel's  soul  was 
flooded  with  a  vast  affection  for  Alan  and  for  Nancy.  He 
wished  that  they  all  could  stay  here  in  the  wind  forever. 
It  was  depressing  to  think  of  the  autumn  rain  and  the  dreary 
gaslit  hours  of  afternoon  school.  And  yet  it  was  not  de- 
pressing at  all,  for  he  and  Alan  might  be  able  to  achieve 
the  same  class.  It  would  be  difficult,  for  Michael  knew 
that  he  himself  must  inevitably  be  moved  up  two  forms, 
while  Alan  was  only  in  the  Upper  Third  now  and  could 
scarcely  for  being  ninth  in  his  class  get  beyond  the  Lower 
Fourth,  even  if  he  escaped  the  Shell.  How  Michael  wished 
that  Alan  could  go  into  the  Special  for  a  time,  and  how 
pleasant  it  would  be  suddenly  to  behold  Alan's  entrance 
into  his  class,  so  that,  without  unduly  attracting  attention, 


i8o  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

he  could  manage  to  secure  a  desk  for  Alan  next  to  himself. 
But  when  Michael  and  Alan  (now  again  the  austere 
Fane  and  Merivale)  went  back  to  school,  Michael  was  in 
the  Middle  Fourth,  and  Alan  just  missed  the  double 
remove  and  inherited  Michael's  scrabbled  desk  in  the  Shell. 


CHAPTER    III 
PASTORAL 

THE  new  term  opened  inausplciously ;  for  Miss 
Carthew  fell  ill  again  more  seriously,  and  Michael's 
mother  came  back,  seeming  cross  and  worried. 
She  settled  that,  as  she  could  not  stay  at  home  for  long, 
Michael  must  be  a  boarder  for  a  year.  Michael  did  not  at 
all  like  this  idea,  and  begged  that  Nancy  might  come  and 
look  after  him.  But  Mrs.  Fane  told  him  not  to  make  every- 
thing more  difficult  than  it  was  already  by  grumbling  and 
impossible  suggestions.  Michael  was  overcome  by  his 
mother's  crossness  and  said  no  more.  Mrs.  Fane  announced 
her  intention  of  shutting  up  the  house  in  Carlington  Road 
and  of  coming  back  in  the  summer  to  live  permanently  at 
home,  when  Michael  would  be  able  to  be  a  day-boy  again. 
Mrs.  Fane  seemed  injured  all  the  time  she  had  to  spend  in 
making  arrangements  for  Michael  to  go  to  Mr.  Wheeler's 
House.  She  wished  that  people  would  not  get  ill  just  when 
it  was  most  inconvenient.  She  could  not  understand  why 
everything  happened  at  exactly  the  wrong  moment,  and  she 
was  altogether  different  from  the  tranquil  and  lovely  lady 
whom  Michael  had  hitherto  known.  However,  the  windows 
of  Number  64  were  covered  with  newspapers,  the  curtain- 
poles  were  stripped  bare,  the  furniture  stood  heaped  in  the 
middle  of  rooms  under  billowy  sheets,  and  Michael  drove 
up  with  all  his  luggage  to  the  gaunt  boarding-house  of  Mr. 
Wheeler  that  overlooked  the  School  ground. 

181 


1 82  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Michael  knew  that  the  alteration  in  his  status  would  make 
a  great  difference.  Long  ago  he  remembered  how  his  friend- 
ship with  Buckley  had  been  finally  severed  by  the  breaking 
up  of  Buckley's  home  and  the  collapse  of  all  Buckley's 
previous  opinions.  Michael  now  found  himself  in  similar 
case.  To  be  sure,  there  was  not  at  St.  James'  the  same  icy 
river  of  prejudice  between  boarders  and  day-boys  which 
divided  them  so  irreparably  at  Randell's.  Nevertheless, 
it  was  impossible  for  a  boarder  to  preserve  unspoilt  a  real 
intimacy  with  a  day-boy.  To  begin  with,  all  sorts  of  new 
rules  about  streets  being  in  and  out  of  bounds  made  it 
impossible  to  keep  up  those  delightful  walks  home  with 
boys  who  w^nt  in  the  same  direction  as  oneself.  There 
was  no  longer  that  hurried  appeal  to  "wait  for  me  at  five 
o'clock"  as  one  passed  a  friend  in  the  helter-skelter  of 
reaching  the  class-room,  when  the  five  minutes'  bell  had 
stopped  and  the  clock  was  already  chiming  three.  It  was  not 
etiquette  among  the  boarders  of  the  four  Houses  to  walk 
home  with  day-boys  except  in  a  large  and  amorphous  com- 
pany of  both.  It  was  impossible  to  go  to  tea  with  day-boys 
on  Saturday  afternoons  without  special  leave  both  from  the 
Housemaster  and  from  the  captain  of  the  House.  A  boarder 
was  tied  down  mercilessly  to  athletics,  particularly  to  rowing, 
which  was  the  pride  of  the  Houses  and  was  exalted  by  them 
above  every  other  branch  of  sport.  Michael,  as  a  promising 
light-weight,  had  to  swim  every  Saturday,  until  he  could 
pass  the  swimming  test  at  the  Paddington  Baths,  when  he 
became  a  member  of  the  rowing  club,  in  order  to  cox  the 
House  four.  It  did  not  add  to  his  satisfaction  with  life, 
when  by  his  alleged  bad  steering  Wheeler's  House  was  beaten 
by  Marlowe's  House  coxed  by  the  objectionable  Buckley, 
now  on  the  Modern  Side  and,  as  a  result  of  his  capable 
handling  of  the  ropes,  likely  to  be  cox  of  the  School  Eight 
in  the  race  against  Dulford  from  Putney  Bridge  to  Hammer- 
smith.    The  Christmas  holidays  were  a  dismal  business  in 


PASTORAL  183 


Mr.  Wheeler's  empty  barracks.  To  be  sure,  Mrs.  Wheeler 
made  herself  as  plumply  agreeable  as  she  could;  but  the 
boredom  of  it  all  was  exasperating  and  was  only  sustained 
by  reading  every  volume  that  Henty  had  ever  written. 
Four  weeks  never  dragged  so  endlessly,  even  in  the  glooms 
of  Carlington  Road  under  Nurse's  rule.  The  Lent  term 
with  its  persistent  rowing  practice  on  the  muddy  Thames 
was  almost  as  bad  as  the  holidays.  Michael  hated  the  barges 
that  bore  down  upon  him  and  the  watermen  who  pulled 
across  the  bows  of  his  boat.  He  hated  the  mudlarks  by  the 
riverside  who  jeered  as  he  followed  the  crew  into  the 
School  boathouse,  and  he  loathed  the  walk  home  with  the 
older  boys  who  talked  incessantly  of  their  own  affairs. 
Nor  did  the  culminating  disaster  of  the  defeat  by  Marlowe's 
House  mitigate  his  lot.  When  the  Lent  term  was  over, 
to  his  great  disappointment,  some  domestic  trouble  made 
it  impossible  for  Michael  to  spend  the  Easter  holidays 
with  Alan,  so  that  instead  of  three  weeks  to  weld  again  that 
friendship  in  April  wanderings,  in  finding  an  early  white- 
throat's  nest  in  the  front  of  May,  and  in  all  the  long 
imagined  delights  of  spring,  Michael  was  left  again  with 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  Wheeler  to  spend  a  month  of  rain  at  a  bleak 
golf-resort,  where  he  was  only  kept  from  an  unvoiced  misery 
by  reading  "Brother  takes  the  hand  of  brother"  in  Long- 
fellow's Psalm  of  Life,  melting  thereat  into  a  flood  of  tears 
that  relieved  his  lonely  oppression. 

Even  the  summer  term  was  a  bondage  with  its  incessant 
fagging  for  balls,  while  the  lords  of  the  House  practiced 
assiduously  at  the  nets.  He  and  Alan  walked  together 
sometimes  during  the  quarter  and  held  on  to  the  stray 
threads  of  their  friendship  that  still  resisted  the  exacting 
knife  of  the  House's  etiquette;  but  it  became  increasingly 
difficult  under  the  stress  of  boarding-school  existence. 
Indeed,  it  was  only  the  knowledge  that  this  summer  term 
would  end  the  miserable  time  and  that  Alan  was  catching  up 


1 84  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

to  Michael's  class  which  supported  the  two  friends  through 
their  exile.  Michael  was  savagely  jealous,  when  he  saw 
Alan  leaving  the  School  at  five  o'clock  arm  in  arm  with  an- 
other boy.  He  used  to  sulk  for  a  week  afterwards,  avoiding 
Alan  in  the  quarter  and  ostentatiously  burying  himself  in  a 
group  of  boarders.  And  if  Alan  would  affectionately  catch 
him  up  w^hen  he  was  alone,  Michael  w^ould  turn  on  him  and 
with  bitter  taunts  suggest  that  Alan's  condescension  was 
unnecessary.  In  School  itself  Michael  was  bored  by  his 
sojourn  both  in  the  Middle  Fourth  and  in  the  Upper 
Fourth  B.  The  Cicero  and  the  Thucj'dides  were  vilely  dull; 
all  the  dullest  books  of  the  ^neid  were  carefully  chosen, 
while  Mr.  MarjoriBanks  and  Mr.  Gale  were  both  very  dull 
teachers.  At  the  end  of  the  summer  examinations,  Michael 
found  himself  at  the  bottom  of  the  Upper  Fourth  B  in 
Classics,  in  Drawing  and  in  English.  However,  the  knowl- 
edge that  next  term  w^ould  now  inevitably  find  him  and  Alan 
in  the  same  class,  meeting  again  as  equals,  as  day-boys 
gloriously  free,  sustained  him  through  a  thunderous  inter- 
view with  Dr.  Brownjohn.  He  emerged  from  the  Doctor's 
study  in  a  confusion  of  abusive  epithets  to  find  Alan  loyally 
waiting  for  him  by  the  great  plaster  cast  of  the  Laocoon. 

"Damn  old  Brownjohn,"  growled  Michael.  *'I  think  he's 
the  damnedest  old  beast  that  ever  lived.     I  do  hate  him." 

"Oh,  bother  him,"  cried  Alan,  dancing  with  excitement. 
"Look  here,  I  say,  at  this  telegram.  It's  just  arrived.  The 
porter  was  frightfully  sick  at  having  to  give  me  a  telegram. 
He  is  a  sidy  swine.  What  do  you  think?  My  uncle  is 
going  to  marry  Miss  Carthew!" 

"Get  out,"  scoffed  Michael,  whose  brain,  overwhelmed 
by  the  pealing  thunders  of  his  late  interview,  refused  to 
register  any  more  shocks. 

"No,  really.     Read  this." 

Michael  took  the  piece  of  paper  and  read  the  news.  But 
he  was  still  under  the  influence  of  a  bad  year  and,  instead  of 


PASTORAL  185 


dancing  with  Alan  to  the  tune  of  his  excitement,  grumbled : 
"Well,  why  didn't  Miss  Carthew  send  a  telegram  to  me? 

I  think  she  might  have.     I  believe  this  is  all  bally  rot." 
Alan's   face   changed,   changed   indeed   to    an   expression 

of  such  absolute  disappointment  that  Michael  was  touched 

and,  forgetting  all  that  he  had  endured,  thrust  his  arm  into 

Alan's  arm  and  murmured: 

'*By  Jove,  old  Alan,  it  is  rather  decent,  isn't  it?" 
When   Michael   reached    the   House,   he   found   a  letter 

from  Miss  Carthew,  which  consoled  him  for  that  bad  year 

and  made  him  still  more  penitent  for  his  late  ungraciousness 

toward  Alan. 

Cobble  Place, 

My  dear  old  Michael:  J^^^  ^7* 

You  will  be  tremendously  surprised  to  hear  that  I  am 
going  to  marry  Captain  Ross.  I  fancy  I  can  hear  you  say 
"What  rot.  I  don't  believe  it."  But  I  am,  and  of  course 
you  can  understand  how  gloriously  happy  I  feel,  for  you 
know  how  much  you  liked  him.  Poor  old  boy,  I'm  afraid 
you've  had  a  horrid  time  all  this  year,  and  I  wish  I  hadn't 
been  so  stupid  as  to  get  ill,  but  never  mind,  it's  over  now 
and  Captain  Ross  and  I  are  coming  up  to  London  to  fetch 
you  and  Alan  down  here  to  spend  the  whole  of  the  holidays 
and  make  the  wedding  a  great  success.  May,  Joan  and 
Nancy  and  my  mother  all  send  their  very  best  love,  and 
Nancy  says  she's  looking  forward  to  your  new  ties  (I  don't 
know  what  obscure  jest  of  hers  this  is)  and  also  to  hear  of 
your  engagement  (silly  girl!)  I  shall  see  you  on  Wednes- 
day and  you're  going  to  have  splendid  holidays,  I  can  prom- 
ise you.  Your  mother  writes  to  say  that  she  is  coming 
back  to  live  at  home  in  September,  so  there'll  be  no  more 
boarding  school  for  you.  Stella  wrote  to  me  from  Ger- 
many, and  I  hear  from  Frau  Weingardt  that  everybody 
prophesies  a  triumphant  career  for  her,  so  don't  snub  her 
when  she  comes  back  for  her  holidays  in  the  autumn.  Just 
be  as  nice  as  you  can,  and  you  can  be  very  nice  if  you  like. 
Will  you?  Now,  dear  old  boy,  my  best  love  till  we  meet 
on  Wednesday.  Your  loving 

Maud  Carthew. 
13 


1 86  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Then  indeed  Michael  felt  that  life  was  the  finest  thing 
conceivable,  and  in  a  burst  of  affectionate  duty  wrote  a 
long  letter  to  Stella,  giving  with  every  detail  an  account 
of  how  Wheeler's  beat  Marlowe's  at  cricket,  including  the 
running-out  of  that  beast  Buckley  by  Michael  amidst  the 
plaudits  of  his  House.  Next  morning  Alan  told  him  that 
his  mother  was  frightfully  keen  for  Michael  to  stay  with 
them  at  Richmond,  until  his  Uncle  Ken  and  Miss  Carthew 
arrived ;  and  so  Michael  by  special  leave  from  Mr.  Wheeler 
left  the  House  a  day  or  two  before  the  others  and  had  the 
exquisite  pleasure  of  traveling  up  with  Alan  by  the  District 
Railway  to  Hammersmith  Broadway  for  a  few  mornings, 
and  of  walking  arm  in  arm  with  Alan  through  the  School 
gates.  Mrs.  Merivale  was  as  pretty  as  ever,  almost  as  pretty 
as  his  own  beautiful  mother,  and  Mr.  Merivale  entertained 
Michael  and  Alan  with  his  conjuring  tricks  and  his  phono- 
graph and  his  ridiculous  puns.  Even  when  they  reached  the 
gate  in  a  summer  shower  and  ran  past  the  sweet-smelling 
rose  trees  in  the  garden,  Mr.  Merivale  shouted  from  the 
front  door,  "Hello,  here  come  the  Weterans,"  but,  when  he 
had  been  severely  punched  for  so  disgraceful  a  joke,  he  was 
flatly  impenitent  and  made  half  a  dozen  more  puns  imme- 
diately afterwards.  In  a  day  or  tw^o  Miss  Carthew  and 
Captain  Ross  arrived,  and  after  they  had  spent  long  mysteri- 
ous days  shopping  in  town,  Michael  and  Alan  and  Miss  Car- 
thew and  Captain  Ross  traveled  down  to  Hampshire — the 
jolliest  railway  party  that  was  ever  known. 

Nothing  at  Basingstead  Minor  seemed  to  have  changed 
in  five  years,  from  the  dun  pony  to  the  phloxes  in  the 
garden,  from  the  fantail  pigeons  to  the  gardener  who  fed 
the  pigs.  Michael  spent  all  the  first  few  hours  in  rapid 
renewals  of  friendship  with  scenery  and  animals,  dragging 
Alan  at  his  heels  and  even  suggesting  about  ten  minutes 
before  the  gong  would  sound  for  dinner  that  they  should 
bunk  round  and  borrow  the  key  of  the  tower  on  the  hill. 


PASTORAL  187 


He  and  Alan  slept  up  in  the  roof  in  a  delightful  impromptu 
of  a  room  with  uneven  bare  floor  and  sloping  ceiling  and 
above  their  beds  a  trap-door  into  an  apple  loft.  There  were 
at  least  half  a  dozen  windows  with  every  possible  aspect  to 
the  neat  high  road  and  the  stable-yard  arid  the  sun-dyed 
garden  and  the  tall  hills  beyond.  August  was  a  blaze  of  blue 
and  green  and  gold  that  year,  but  everybody  at  Cobble  Place 
was  busy  getting  ready  for  the  wedding  and  Michael  and 
Alan  had  the  countryside  to  themselves.  Their  chief 
enterprise  was  the  exploration  of  the  sources  of  the  stream 
in  a  canoe  and  a  fixed  endeavor  to  reach  Basingstead  Major 
by  water.  Early  in  the  morning  they  would  set  out,  well 
equipped  with  scarlet  cushions  and  butterfly-nets  and  poison- 
bottles  and  sandwiches  and  stone  bottles  of  ginger-beer 
and  various  illustrated  papers  and  Duke's  Cameo  cigarettes. 
Michael  now  paid  fivepence  for  ten  instead  of  a  penny  for 
five  cigarettes;  he  also  had  a  pipe  of  elegantly  tenuous 
shape,  which  was  knocked  out  so  often  that  it  looked  quite 
old,  although  it  was  scarcely  colored  at  all  by  tobacco  smoke. 
Nowadays  he  did  not  bother  to  chew  highly  scented  sweets 
after  smoking,  because  Captain  Ross  smoked  so  much  that 
all  the  blame  of  suspicious  odors  could  be  laid  on  him. 

Those  were  halcyon  days  on  that  swift  Hampshire  river. 
Michael  and  Alan  would  have  to  paddle  hard  all  the  morn- 
ing and  scarcely  make  any  progress  against  the  stream. 
Every  opportunity  to  moor  the  canoe  was  taken  advantage 
of;  and  the  number  of  Marsh  Fritillaries  that  were  sacri- 
ficed to  justify  a  landing  in  rich  water-meadows  was  enor- 
mous. 

"Never  mind,"  Michael  used  to  say,  "they'll  do  for 
swaps." 

Through  the  dazzling  weather  the  kingfishers  with  wings 
of  blue  fire  would  travel  up  and  down  the  stream.  The 
harvest  was  at  its  height  and  in  unseen  meadows  sounded 
the  throb  of  the  reaper  and  binder,  while  close  at  hand  above 


188  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

the  splash  and  gurgle  of  the  rhythmic  paddles  could  be 
heard  the  munching  of  cattle.  To  left  and  right  of  the 
urgent  boat  darted  the  silver  companies  of  dace,  and  deep 
in  brown  embayed  pools  swam  the  fat  nebulous  forms  of 
chub.  Sometimes  the  stream,  narrowing  where  a  large 
tree-trunk  had  fallen,  gushed  by  their  prow  and  called  for 
every  muscle  to  stand  out,  for  every  inch  to  be  fought, 
for  every  blade  of  grass  to  be  clutched  before  the  canoe 
won  a  way  through.  Sometimes  the  stream  widened  to 
purling  rapids  and  scarcely  would  even  a  canoe  float  upon 
the  diamonded  rivulets  and  tumbling  pebbles  and  silting 
silver  sand,  so  that  Michael  and  Alan  would  have  to  dis- 
embark and  drag  the  boat  to  deeper  water.  Quickly  the 
morning  went  by,  long  before  the  source  of  the  stream  was 
found,  long  before  even  the  village  of  Basingstead  Major 
was  reached.  Some  fathomless  millpool  would  hold  Michael 
and  Alan  with  its  hollow  waterfall  and  overarching  trees 
and  gigantic  pike.  Here  grew,  dipping  down  to  the  water, 
sprays  of  dewberries,  and  here,  remote  even  from  twittering 
w^arblers  and  the  distant  harvest  cries,  Michael  and  Alan 
drowsed  away  the  afternoon.  They  scarcely  spoke,  for  they 
were  too  w^ell  contented  with  the  languorous  weather. 
Sometimes  one  of  them  would  clothe  a  dream  with  a  boy's 
slang,  and  that  was  all.  Then,  when  the  harvesters  had  long 
gone  home  and  when  the  last  cow  was  stalled,  and  when  the 
rabbits  were  scampering  by  the  edge  of  the  sloping  wood- 
lands, Michael  and  Alan  would  unmoor  their  canoe  and  glide 
homeward  with  the  stream.  Through  the  deepening  silence 
their  boat  would  swing  soundlessly  past  the  purple  loosestrife 
and  the  creamy  meadowsweet,  past  the  yellow  loosestrife 
and  scented  rushes  and  the  misted  blue  banks  of  cranesbill, 
past  the  fig^vort  and  the  little  yellow  waterlilies,  while 
ahvays  before  their  advance  the  voles  plumped  into  the  water 
one  by  one  and  in  hawthorn  bushes  the  wings  of  roosting 
birds  fluttered.     Around  them  on  every  side  crept  the  mist 


PASTORAL  189 


in  whose  silver  muteness  they  landed  to  gather  white 
mushrooms.  Home  they  would  come  drenched  with  dew^ 
and  arm  in  arm  they  would  steal  up  the  dusky  garden  to 
the  rose-red  lamps  and  twinkling  golden  candlelight  of 
Cobble  Place. 

In  the  actual  week  before  the  wedding  Michael  and  Alan 
were  kept  far  too  busy  to  explore  streams.  They  ran  from 
one  end  of  Basingstead  Minor  to  the  other  and  back 
about  a  dozen  times  a  day.  They  left  instructions  with 
various  old  ladies  in  the  village  at  whose  cottages  guests  were 
staying.  They  carried  complicated  floral  messages  from 
Mrs.  Carthew  to  the  Vicar  and  equally  complicated  floral 
replies  from  the  Vicar  to  Mrs.  Carthew.  They  were  allowed 
to  drive  the  aged  dun  pony  to  meet  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Merivale 
on  the  day  before  the  wedding  and  had  great  jokes  with  Mr. 
Merivale  because  he  would  say  that  it  was  an  underdone 
pony  and  because  he  would  not  believe  that  dun  was  spelt 
d-u-n.  As  for  the  wedding-day  itself,  it  was  for  Michael 
and  Alan  one  long  message  interrupted  only  by  an  argument 
with  the  cook  with  regard  to  the  amount  of  rice  they  had 
a  right  to  take. 

Michael  felt  very  shy  at  the  reception  and  managed  to 
avoid  calling  Miss  Carthew  Mrs.  Ross;  although  Alan  dis- 
tinctly addressed  her  once  with  great  boldness  as  Aunt 
Maud,  for  which  he  was  violently  punched  in  the  ribs  by 
Michael,  as  with  stifled  laughter  they  both  rushed  headlong 
from  the  room.  However,  they  came  back  to  hear  old  Major 
Carthew  proposing  the  bride  and  bridegroom's  health  and 
plunged  themselves  into  a  corner  with  handkerchiefs  stuffed 
into  their  mouths  to  listen  to  Captain  Ross  stammer  an  em- 
barrassed reply.  They  were  both  much  relieved  when 
Mr.  Merivale  by  a  series  of  the  most  atrocious  puns  allowed 
their  laughter  to  flow  forth  without  restraint.  All  the  guests 
went  back  to  London  later  in  the  afternoon  and  Michael  and 
Alan    were    left    to    the    supervision    of    Nancy,    who    had 


I90  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

promised  to  take  them  out  for  a  day's  shooting.  They  had 
a  wonderful  day  over  the  flickering  September  stubble. 
Michael  shot  a  lark  by  mistake  and  Alan  wounded  a  land- 
rail; Nancy,  however,  redeemed  the  party's  credit  by 
bagging  three  brace  of  fat  French  partridges  which,  when 
eaten,  tasted  like  pigeons,  because  the  boys  could  not  bear 
to  wait  for  them  to  be  hung  even  for  two  hours. 

Michael  had  a  conversation  with  Mrs.  Carthew  one  after- 
noon, while  they  paced  slowly  and  regularly  the  gay  path 
beside  the  sunny  red  wall  of  the  garden. 

''Well,  how  do  you  like  school  now?"  she  asked.  'Dear 
me,  I  must  say  you're  greatly  improved,"  she  went  on. 
"Really,  when  you  came  here  five  years  ago,  you  were 
much  too  delicate-looking." 

Michael  kicked  the  gravel  and  tried  to  turn  the  trend 
of  the  conversation  by  admiring  the  plums  on  the  wall, 
but  Mrs.  Carthew  went  on. 

"Now  you  really  look  quite  a  boy.  You  and  Alan  both 
slouch  abominably,  and  I  cannot  think  why  boys  always 
w^alk  on  one  side  of  their  boots.  I  must  say  I  do  not  like 
delicate  boys.  My  own  boy  w^as  always  such  a  boy."  Mrs. 
Carthew  sighed  and  Michael  looked  very  solemn. 

"Well,  do  you  like  school?"  she  asked. 

"I  like  holidays  better,'*  answered  Michael. 

"I'm  delighted  to  hear  it,"  Mrs.  Carthew  said  decidedly. 

"I  thought  last  year  was  beastly,"  said  Michael.  "You 
see  I  was  a  boarder  and  that's  rot,  if  you  were  a  day-boy 
ever,  at  least  I  think  so.  Alan  and  me  are  in  the  same  form 
next  term.  We're  going  to  have  a  most  frightful  spree. 
We're  going  to  do  everything  together.  I  expect  school 
won't  be  half  bad  then." 

"Your  mother's  going  to  be  at  home,  isn't  she?"  Mrs. 
Carthew  inquired. 

"Yes.  Rather,"  said  Michael.  "It  will  be  awfully  rum. 
She's  always  away,  you  know.     I  wonder  why." 


PASTORAL  191 


"I  expect  she  likes  traveling  about,"  said  Mrs.  Carthew. 

"Yes,  I  expect  she  does,"  Michael  agreed.  ''But  don't 
you  think  it's  very  rum  that  I  haven't  got  any  uncles  or 
aunts  or  any  relations?  I  do.  I  never  meet  people  w^ho 
say  they  knew  my  father  like  Alan  does  and  like  Miss — 
like  Mrs.  Ross  does.  Once  I  went  with  my  mater  to  see 
an  awfully  decent  chap  called  Lord  Saxby  and  my  name's 
Saxby.  Do  you  think  he's  a  relation?  I  asked  the  mater, 
but  she  said  something  about  not  asking  silly  questions." 

"Humph!"  said  Mrs.  Carthew,  as  she  adjusted  her 
spectacles  to  examine  an  espalier  of  favorite  peaches.  "I 
think  you'll  have  to  be  very  good  to  your  mother,"  she  con- 
tinued after  a  minute's  silence. 

"Oh,  rather,"  assented  Michael  vaguely. 

"You  must  always  remember  that  you  have  a  particular 
responsibility,  as  you  will  be  alone  with  her  for  a  long  time, 
and,  no  doubt,  she  has  given  up  a  great  deal  of  what  she  most 
enjoys  in  order  to  stay  with  you.  So  don't  think  only  of 
yourself." 

"Oh,  rather  not,"  said  Michael. 

In  his  heart  he  felt  while  Mrs.  Carthew  was  speaking 
a  sense  of  remote  anxiety.  He  could  not  understand  why, 
as  soon  as  he  asked  any  direct  questions,  mystery  enveloped 
his  world.  He  had  grown  used  to  this  in  Miss  Carthew's 
case,  but  Mrs.  Carthew  was  just  as  unapproachable.  He 
began  to  wonder  if  there  really  were  some  mystery  about 
himself.  He  knew  the  habit  among  grown-up  people  of 
wrapping  everything  in  a  veil  of  uncertainty,  but  in  his  case 
it  was  so  universally  adopted  that  he  began  to  be  suspicious 
and  determined  to  question  his  mother  relentlessly,  to  lay 
conversational  traps  for  her  and  thereby  gain  bit  by  bit  the 
details  of  his  situation.  He  was  older  now  and  had  already 
heard  such  rumors  of  the  real  life  of  the  world  that  a 
chimera  of  unpleasant  possibilities  was  rapidly  forming. 
Left  alone,  he  began  to  speculate  perpetually  about  himself. 


192  YQUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

to  brood  over  anxious  guesses.  Perhaps  his  father  was  in 
prison  and  not  dead  at  all.  Perhaps  his  father  was  in  a 
lunatic  asylum.  Perhaps  he  himself  had  been  a  foundling 
laid  on  the  doorstep  long  ago,  belonging  neither  to  his  mother 
nor  to  anyone  else.  He  racked  his  brain  for  light  from  the 
past  to  be  shed  upon  his  present  perplexity,  but  he  could 
recall  no  flaw  in  the  care  with  which  his  ignorance  had  been 
cherished. 

When  Michael  reached  Carlington  Road  on  a  fine  Sep- 
tember afternoon  and  saw  the  window-boxes  of  crimson 
and  w^hite  petunias  and  the  sunlight  streaming  down  upon 
the  red-brick  houses,  he  was  glad  to  be  home  again  in  familiar 
Sixty-four.  Inside  it  had  all  been  repapered  and  repainted. 
Every  room  was  much  more  beautiful  and  his  mother  was 
glad  to  see  him.  She  took  him  round  all  the  new  rooms  and 
hugged  him  close  and  was  her  slim  and  lovely  self  again. 
Actually,  among  many  surprises,  Michael  was  to  have  the 
old  gloomy  morning-room  for  himself  and  his  friends.  It 
looked  altogether  different  now  in  the  checkered  sunlight 
of  the  plane  tree.  The  walls  had  been  papered  with  scenes 
from  cowboy  life.  There  were  new  cupboards  and  shelves 
full  of  new  books  and  an  asbestos  gas  fire.  There  were 
some  jolly  chairs  and  a  small  desk  which  almost  invited  one 
to  compose  iambics. 

"Can  I  really  have  chaps  to  tea  every  Saturday?"  Michael 
asked,  stupefied  with  pleasure. 

"Whenever  you  like,  dearest  boy." 

"By  Jove,  how  horribly  decent,"  said  Michael. 


CHAPTER    IV 
BOYHOOD'S    GLORY 

WHEN  at  the  beginning  of  term  a  melancholy- 
senior  boy,  meeting  Michael  in  one  of  the  corri- 
dors during  the  actual  excitement  of  the  move, 
asked  him  what  form  he  was  going  into  and  heard  he  was 
on  the  road  to  Caryll's,  this  boy  sighed,  and  exclaimed: 

"Lucky  young  devil." 

"Why?"  asked  Michael,  pushing  his  way  through  the 
diversely  flowing  streams  of  boys  who  carried  household 
gods  to  new  class-rooms. 

"Why,  haven't  you  ever  heard  old  Caryll  is  the  greatest 
topper  that  ever  walked?" 

"I've  heard  he's  rather  a  decent  sort." 

"Chaps  have  said  to  me — chaps  who've  left,  I  mean," 
explained  the  lantern-jawed  adviser,  "that  the  year  with 
Caryll  is  the  best  year  of  all  your  life." 

Michael  looked  incredulous. 

"You  won't  think  so,"  prophesied  Lantern-jaws  gloomily. 
"Of  course  you  won't."  Then,  with  a  sigh  that  was  audible 
above  the  shuffling  feet  along  the  corridors,  he  turned  to 
enter  a  mathematical  class-room  where  Michael  caught  a 
glimpse  of  trigonometrical  mysteries  upon  a  blackboard,  as  he 
himself  hurried  by  with  his  armful  of  books  toward  Caryll's 
class-room.  He  hoped  Alan  had  bagged  two  desks  next  to 
each  other  in  the  back  row;  but  unfortunately  this  scheme 
was    upset    by    Mr.    Caryll's    proposal    that    the    Upper 

193 


194  YOUTH'S  ENCOUNTER 

Fourth  A  should  for  the  present  sit  in  alphabetical  order. 
There  was  only  one  unit  between  Michael  and  Alan,  a 
persevering  and  freckled  Jew  called  Levy,  whose  life  was 
made  a  burden  to  him  in  consequence  of  his  interposition. 

Mr.  Caryll  was  an  old  clergyman  reputed  in  school 
traditions  to  be  verging  on  ninety.  Michael  scarcely  thought 
he  could  be  so  old,  when  he  saw  him  walking  to  school  with 
rapid  little  steps  and  a  back  as  straight  and  soldierly  as 
General  Mace's.  Mr.  Caryll  had  many  idiosyncrasies, 
among  others  a  rasping  cough  which  punctuated  all  his 
sentences  and  a  curious  habit  of  combining  three  pairs  of 
spectacles  according  to  his  distance  from  the  object  in 
view.  Nobody  ever  discovered  the  exact  range  of  these 
spectacles;  but,  to  reckon  broadly,  three  pairs  at  once 
were  necessary  for  an  exercise  on  the  desk  before  him 
and  for  the  antics  of  the  back  row  of  desks  only  one. 
Mr.  Caryll  was  so  deaf  that  the  loudest  turmoil  in 
the  back  row  reached  him  in  the  form  of  a  whisper 
that  made  him  intensely  suspicious  of  cribbing;  but,  as 
he  could  never  remember  where  any  boy  was  sitting,  by 
the  time  he  had  put  on  or  taken  off  one  of  his  pairs  of  glasses, 
the  noise  had  opportunity  to  subside  and  the  authors  were 
able  to  compose  their  countenances  for  the  sharp  scrutiny 
which  followed.  Mr.  Caryll  always  expected  every  pupil 
to  cheat  and  invented  various  stratagems  to  prevent  this 
vice.  In  a  temper  he  was  apparently  the  most  cynical  of 
men,  but  as  his  temper  never  lasted  long  enough  for  him 
to  focus  his  vision  upon  the  suspected  person,  he  was  in 
practice  the  blandest  and  most  amiable  of  old  gentlemen. 
He  could  never  resist  even  the  most  obvious  joke,  and  his 
form  pandered  shamelessly  to  this  fondness  of  his,  so  that, 
when  he  made  a  pun,  they  would  rock  with  laughter,  stamp 
their  feet  on  the  floor  and  bang  the  lids  of  their  desks  to 
express  their  appreciation.  This  hullabaloo,  which  reached 
Mr.  Caryll  in  the  guise  of  a  mild  titter,  affording  him  the 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY  195 

utmost  satisfaction,  could  be  heard  even  in  distant  class- 
rooms, and  sometimes  serious  mathematical  masters  in  the 
throes  of  algebra  would  send  polite  messages  to  beg  Mr. 
Caryll  kindly  to  keep  his  class  more  quiet. 

Michael  and  Alan  often  enjoyed  themselves  boundlessly 
in  Mr.  Caryll's  form.  Sometimes  they  would  deliberately 
misconstrue  Cicero  to  beget  a  joke,  as  when  Michael 
translated  "abjectique  homines"  by  "cast-off  men"  to 
afford  Mr.  Caryll  the  chance  of  saying,  "Tut-tut. 
The  great  booby's  thinking  of  his  cast-off  clothing." 
Michael  and  Alan  used  to  ask  for  leave  to  light  the 
gas  on  foggy  afternoons,  and  with  an  imitation  of  Mr. 
Caryll's  rasping  cough  they  would  manage  to  extinguish 
one  by  one  a  whole  box  of  matches  to  the  immense 
entertainment  of  the  Upper  Fourth  A.  They  dug  pens 
into  the  diligent  Levy;  they  stuck  the  lid  of  his  desk  with 
a  row  of  thin  gelatin  lozenges  in  order  that,  when  after 
a  struggle  he  managed  to  open  it,  the  lid  should  fly  up  and 
hit  him  a  blow  on  the  chin.  They  loosed  blackbeetles  in 
the  middle  of  Greek  Testament  and  pretended  to  be  very 
much  afraid  while  Mr.  Caryll  stamped  upon  them  one 
by  one,  deriding  their  cowardice.  They  threw  paper  darts 
and  paper  pellets  with  unerring  aim;  they  put  drawing- 
pins  in  the  seat  of  a  fat  and  industrious  German  called 
Wertheim;  they  filled  up  all  the  ink-pots  in  the  form  with 
blotting-paper  and  crossed  every  single  nib.  They  played 
xylophonic  tunes  with  penholders  on  the  desk's  edge  and 
carved  their  initials  inside;  they  wrote  their  names  in  ink 
and  made  the  inscription  permanent  by  rubbing  it  over  with 
blotting-paper.  They  were  seized  with  sudden  and  un- 
accountable fits  of  bleeding  from  the  nose  to  gain  a  short 
Exeat  to  stand  in  the  fresh  air  by  the  Fives  Courts.  They 
built  up  ramparts  of  dictionaries  in  the  forefront  of  their 
desks  to  play  noughts  and  crosses  without  detection;  they 
soaked  with  ink  all  the  chalk  for  the  blackboard  and  divested 


196  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

Levy  of  his  boots  which  they  passed  round  the  form  during 
"rep";  they  made  elaborate  jointed  rods  with  foolscap 
to  prod  otherwise  unassailable  boys  at  the  other  end  of  the 
room  and  when,  during  the  argument  which  followed  the 
mutual  correction  by  desk-neighbors  of  Mr.  Caryll's 
weekly  examination  paper,  they  observed  an  earnest  group 
of  questioners  gathered  round  the  master's  dais,  they  would 
charge  into  them  from  behind  so  violently  that  the  front 
row,  generally  consisting  of  the  more  eager  and  laborious 
boys,  was  precipitated  against  Mr.  Caryll's  chair  to  the 
confusion  of  labor  and  eagerness.  Retribution  followed 
very  seldom  in  the  shape  of  impots;  and  even  they  were 
soon  done  by  means  of  an  elaborate  arrangement  by  which 
six  pens  lashed  together  did  six  times  the  work  of  one. 
Sometimes  Michael  or  Alan  would  be  invited  to  move  their 
desks  out  close  to  Mr.  Caryll's  dais  of  authority  for  a  week's 
disgrace;  but  even  this  punishment  included  as  compensa- 
tion a  position  of  facing  the  class  and  therefore  the  oppor- 
tunity to  play  the  buffoon  for  its  benefit.  Sometimes 
Michael  or  Alan  would  be  ejected  with  vituperation  from 
the  classroom  to  spend  an  hour  in  the  corridor  without. 
Unfortunately  they  were  never  ejected  together,  and 
anyway  it  was  an  uneasy  experience  on  account  of  Dr. 
Brownjohn's  habit  of  swinging  round  a  corner  and  demand- 
ing a  reason  for  the  discovery  of  a  loiterer  in  the  corridor. 
The  first  time  he  appeared,  it  w^as  always  possible  by  assum- 
ing an  air  of  intentness  and  by  walking  toward  him  very 
quickly  to  convey  the  impression  of  one  upon  an  urgent 
errand;  but  when  Dr.  Brownjohn  loomed  on  his  return 
journey,  it  was  necessary  to  evade  his  savage  glance  by  creep- 
ing round  the  great  cast  of  the  Antlnous  that  fronted  the 
corridor.  On  one  of  these  occasions  Michael  in  his  nervous- 
ness shook  the  statue  and  an  Insecurely  dependent  fig-leaf 
fell  with  a  crash  onto  the  floor.  Michael  nearly  flung 
himself  over  the  well  of  the  main  staircase  In  horror,  but 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY  197 

deaf  Dr.  Brownjohn  swung  past  into  a  gloom  beyond,  and 
presently  Michael  was  relieved  by  the  grinning  face  of  a 
compatriot  beckoning  permission  to  reenter  the  class- 
room. Safely  inside,  the  fall  of  the  fig-leaf  was  made  out 
by  Michael  to  be  an  act  of  deliberate  daring  on  his  part, 
and  when  at  one  o'clock  the  form  rushed  out  to  verify  the 
boast  his  position  was  tremendously  enhanced.  The  news 
flew  round  the  school,  and  several  senior  boys  were  observed 
in  conversation  with  Michael,  so  that  he  was  able  to  swagger 
considerably.  Also  he  turned  up  his  trousers  a  full  two 
inches  higher  and  parted  his  hair  on  the  right-hand  side, 
a  mode  which  had  long  attracted  his  ambition. 

Now,  indeed,  were  Michael  and  Alan  in  the  zenith  of 
boyhood's  glory.  No  longer  did  they  creep  diffidently 
down  the  corridors;  no  longer  did  they  dread  to  run  the 
gauntlet  of  a  Modern  class  lined  up  on  either  side  to  await 
the  form-master's  appearance.  If  some  louts  in  the  Modern 
Fourth  dared  to  push  them  from  side  to  side,  as  they  went 
by,  Michael  and  Alan  would  begin  to  fight  and  would 
shout,  "You  stinking  Modern  beasts!  Classics  to  the 
rescue!"  To  their  rescue  would  pour  the  heroes  of  the 
Upper  Fourth  A.  Down  went  the  Modern  textbooks  of 
Chemistry  and  Physics,  and  ignominiously  were  they  hacked 
along  the  corridor.  Doubled  up  by  a  swinging  blow  from 
a  bag  stood  the  leader  of  the  Moderns,  grunting  and  gasping 
in  his  windless  agony.  Back  to  the  serenity  of  Virgilian  airs 
went  the  Upper  Fourth  A,  with  Michael  and  Alan  arm  in 
arm  amid  their  escort,  and  most  dejectedly  did  the  Modern 
cads  gather  up  their  scientific  textbooks;  but  during  the 
"quarter"  great  was  the  battle  waged  on  the  "gravel" — 
that  haunt  of  thumb-biting,  acrimonious  and  uneasy 
factions.  Michael  and  Alan  were  not  yet  troubled  with  the 
fevers  of  adolescence.  They  were  cool  and  clear  and  joyous 
as  the  mountain  torrent;  for  them  life  was  a  crystal  of 
laughter,    many-faceted    to    adventure.      Theirs    was    now 


198  YOUTITS   ENCOUNTER 

that  sexless  interlude  before  the  Eton  collar  gave  way  to 
the  "stick  up"  and  before  the  Eton  jacket,  trim  and  jaunty, 
was  discarded  for  an  ill-fitting  suit  that  imitated  the  dull 
garb  of  a  man.  No  longer  were  Michael  and  Alan  grubby 
and  inky;  no  longer  did  they  fill  their  pockets  with  an 
agglomeration  of  messes;  no  longer  did  their  hair  sprout 
in  bister  sparseness,  for  now  Michael  and  Alan  were  vain 
of  the  golden  lights  and  chestnut  shadows,  not  because 
girls  mattered,  but  because  like  Narcissus  they  perceived 
themselves  in  the  mirror  of  popular  admiration.  Now  they 
affected  very  light  trousers  and  very  broad  collars  and  shoes 
and  unwrinkling  socks  and  cuffs  that  gleamed  very  white. 
They  looked  back  with  detestation  upon  the  excesses  of 
costume  induced  by  the  quadruple  intrigue,  and  they  con- 
gratulated themselves  that  no  one  of  importance  had  beheld 
their  lapse. 

Michael  and  Alan  w^ere  lords  of  Little  Side  football 
and  in  their  treatment  of  the  underlings  stretched  the  pre- 
rogatives of  greatness  to  the  limit.  They  swaggered  onto 
the  field  of  play,  where  in  combination  on  the  left  wing 
they  brought  off  feats  of  astonishing  swiftness  and  agility. 
Michael  used  to  watch  Alan  seeming  very  fair  in  his  black 
vest  and  poised  eagerly  for  the  ball  to  swing  out  from  the 
half-back.  Alan  would  take  the  spinning  pass  and  bound 
forward  into  the  stink-stained  Modern  juniors  or  embryo 
subalterns  of  Army  C.  The  clumsiest  of  them  would 
receive  Alan's  delicate  hand  full  in  his  face  and,  as  with 
revengeful  mutter  ings  the  enemy  bore  down  upon  him, 
Alan  would  pass  the  ball  to  Michael,  who  with  all  his  speed 
would  gallop  along  the  touch-line  and  score  a  try  in  the 
corner.  Members  of  Big  Side  marked  Michael  and  Alan  as 
the  two  most  promising  three-quarters  for  Middle  Side 
next  year,  and  when  the  bell  sounded  at  twenty  minutes  to 
three  the  members  of  Big  Side  w^ould  walk  with  Michael 
and  Alan  toward  the  changing-room  and  encourage  them 


BOYHOOD'S   GLORY  199 


by  flattery  and  genial  ragging.  In  the  lavatory,  Michael 
and  Alan  would  souse  with  water  all  the  kids  in  reach,  and 
the  kids  would  be  duly  grateful  for  so  much  acknowledg- 
ment of  their  existence  from  these  stripling  gods.  In  the 
changing-room  they  would  pleasantly  fling  the  disordered 
clothes  of  trespassers  near  their  sacred  places  on  to  the  floor 
or  kick  the  caps  of  Second-Form  boys  to  the  dusty  tops  of 
lockers,  and  then,  just  as  the  clock  was  hard  on  three,  they 
would  saunter  up  the  School  steps  and  along  the  corridor 
to  their  classroom,  where  they  would  yawn  their  way 
through  Cicero's  prosy  defence  of  Milo  or  his  fourth  denun- 
ciation of  Catiline. 

At  home  Michael  much  enjoyed  his  mother's  company, 
although  he  was  now  in  the  cold  dawn  of  affection  for  any- 
thing save  Alan.  He  no  longer  was  shocked  by  his  mother's 
solicitude  or  demonstrativeness,  fearful  of  offending 
against  the  rigid  standards  of  the  private  school  or  the  uncer- 
tain position  of  a  new  boy  at  a  public  school.  He  yielded 
gracefully  to  his  mother's  pleasure  in  his  company  out  of 
a  mixture  of  politeness  and  condescension;  but  he  always 
felt  that,  when  he  gave  up  for  an  hour  the  joys  of  the  world 
for  the  cloister  of  domesticity,  he  was  conferring  a  favor: 
At  this  period  nothing  troubled  him  at  all  save  his  position 
in  the  School  and  the  necessity  to  spend  every  available 
minute  with  Alan.  The  uncertainty  of  his  father's  position 
which  had  from  time  to  time  troubled  him  was  allayed  by 
the  zest  of  existence,  and  he  never  bothered  to  question 
his  mother  at  all  pertinaciously.  In  every  way  he  was 
making  a  pleasant  pause  in  his  life  to  enjoy  the  new  emotion 
of  self-confidence,  his  distinction  in  football,  his  popularity 
with  contemporaries  and  seniors  and  his  passion  for  the 
absolute  identification  of  Alan's  behavior  with  his  and  his 
own  with  Alan's.  At  home  every  circumstance  fostered  this 
attitude.  Alone  with  his  mother,  Michael  was  singularly 
free  to  do  as  he  liked  and  he  could  always  produce  from 


200  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

the  past  precedents  which  she  was  unable  to  controvert  for 
any  whim  he  wished  to  establish  as  a  custom.  In  any  case, 
Mrs.  Fane  seemed  to  enjoy  spoiling  him,  and  Michael  was 
no  longer  averse  to  her  praise  of  his  good  looks  and  to 
the  pleasure  she  expressed  in  the  company  of  Alan  and  him- 
self at  a  concert  or  matinee.  Another  reason  for  Michael's 
nonchalant  happiness  was  his  normality.  Nowadays  he 
looked  at  himself  in  the  old  wardrobe  that  once  had  power 
to  terrify  him  with  nocturnal  creakings,  and  no  longer 
did  he  deplore  his  thin  arms  and  legs,  no  longer  did  he  mark 
the  diffidence  of  the  sensitive  small  boy.  Now  he  could  at 
last  congratulate  himself  upon  his  ability  to  hold  his  own 
with  any  of  his  equals  whether  with  tongue  or  fist.  Now, 
too,  when  he  went  to  bed,  he  went  to  bed  as  serenely  as  a 
kitten,  curling  himself  up  to  dream  of  sport  with  mice. 
Sometimes  Alan  on  Friday  night  would  accompany  him  to 
spend  the  week-end  at  Carlington  Road  and,  when  he  did 
so,  the  neighborhood  w^as  not  allowed  to  be  oblivious  of 
the  event.  In  the  autumnal  dusk  Michael  and  he  would 
practice  drop-kicks  and  high  punts  in  the  middle  of  the 
street,  until  the  ball  had  landed  twice  in  two  minutes  on 
the  same  balcony  to  the  great  annoyance  of  the  "skivvy," 
who  was  with  debonair  assurance  invited  to  bung  it  down 
for  a  mere  lordly  "thank  you"  from  the  offenders.  Some- 
times the  ball  would  early  in  the  afternoon  strike  a  sun- 
flamed  window,  and  with  exquisite  laughter  Michael  and 
Alan  would  retreat  to  Number  64,  until  the  alarmed  lady 
of  the  house  was  quietly  within  her  own  doors  again. 
Another  pleasant  diversion  with  a  football  was  to  take 
drop-kicks  from  close  quarters  at  the  backs  of  errand-boys, 
especially  on  wet  days  when  the  ball  left  a  spheroid  of  mud 
where  it  struck  the  body. 

"Yah,  you  think  yourselves — funny,"  the  errand-boy 
would  growl. 

"We  do.     Oh,  rather,"  Michael  and  Alan  would  reply 


BOYHOOD^S    GLORY 201 

and  with  smiling  indifference  defeat  their  target  still  more 
unutterably. 

When  dusk  turned  to  night,  Michael  and  Alan  would 
wonder  what  to  do  and,  after  making  themselves  unbearable 
in  the  kitchen,  they  would  sally  out  into  the  back-garden 
and  execute  some  devilry  at  the  expense  of  neighbors. 
They  would  walk  along  the  boundary  walks  of  the  succedent 
oblongs  of  garden  that  ran  the  w^hole  length  of  the  road; 
and  it  was  a  poor  evening's  sport  which  produced  no  fun 
anj^'here.  Sometimes  they  would  detect,  white  in  the 
darkness,  a  fox-terrier,  whereat  they  would  miaow  and  rustle 
the  poplar  trees  and  reduce  the  dog  to  a  state  of  hysterical 
yapping  which  would  be  echoed  in  various  keys  by  every 
dog  within  earshot.  Sometimes  they  would  observe  a 
lighted  kitchen  with  an  unsuspicious  cook  hard  at  work 
upon  the  dinner,  meditating  perhaps  upon  a  jelly  or  flavor- 
ing anxiously  the  soup.  Then  if  the  window  were  open 
Michael  and  Alan  would  take  pot-shots  at  the  dish  with 
blobs  of  mould  or  creep  down  into  the  basement,  if  the 
window  were  shut,  and  groan  and  howl  to  the  cook's  pallid 
dismay  and  to  the  great  detriment  of  her  family's  dinner. 
In  other  gardens  they  would  fling  explosive  ''slap-bangs" 
against  the  wall  of  the  house  or  fire  a  gunpowder  train  or 
throw  gravel  up  to  a  lighted  bath-room  window.  There 
was  always  some  amusement  to  be  gained  at  a  neighbor's 
expense  between  six  and  seven  o'clock,  at  w^hich  latter  hour 
they  w^ould  creep  demurely  home  and  dress  for  dinner, 
the  only  stipulation  Mrs.  Fane  made  with  Michael  in  ex- 
change for  leave  to  ask  Alan  to  stay  with  him. 

At  dinner,  in  the  orange  glow  of  the  dining-room,  Michael 
and  Alan  would  be  completely  charming  and  very  conver- 
sational, as  they  told  Mrs.  Fane  how  they  rotted  old  Caryll 
or  ragged  young  Levy  or  scored  two  tries  that  afternoon. 
Mrs.  Fane  would  seem  to  be  much  interested  and  make  the 
most  amusing  mistakes  and  keep  her  son  and  her  guest  in  an 
14 


202  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

ecstatic  risibility.  After  dinner  they  would  sit  for  a  while  in 
the  perfumed  drawing-room,  making  themselves  agreeable 
and  useful  by  fetching  Mrs.  Fane's  novel  or  blotting-pad 
or  correspondence,  or  by  pulling  up  an  armchair  or  by 
extricating  a  footstool  and  drawing  close  the  curtains. 
Then  Michael  and  Alan  would  be  inclined  to  fidget,  until 
Michael  announced  it  was  time  to  go  and  swat.  Mrs. 
Fane  would  smile  exquisitely  and  say  how  glad  she  was  they 
did  not  avoid  their  home  w^ork  and  remind  them  to  come  and 
say  good  night  at  ten  o'clock  sharp.  Encouraged  by  Mrs. 
Fane's  gracious  dismissal,  Michael  and  Alan  would  plunge 
into  the  basement  and  gain  the  sanctity  of  Michael's  own 
room.  They  w^ould  elaborately  lay  the  table  for  work, 
spreading  out  foolscap  and  notebooks  and  Cicero  Pro 
Milone  and  Cicero  In  Catilinam  and  Thucydides  IV  and 
the  green-backed  Ion  of  Euripides.  They  would  make  ex- 
haustive researches  into  the  amount  of  work  set  to  be 
show^n  up  on  Monday  morning,  and  with  a  sigh  they  would 
seat  themselves  to  begin.  First  of  all  the  Greek  Testament 
w^ould  be  postponed  until  Sunday  as  a  more  appropriate 
day,  and  then  Michael  would  feel  an  overpowering  desire 
to  smoke  one  cigarette  before  they  began.  This  cigarette 
had  to  be  smoked  close  to  the  open  window,  so  that  the  smoke 
could  be  puffed  outside  into  the  raw  autumnal  air,  w^hile 
Alan  kept  *'cave,"  rushing  to  the  door  to  listen  at  the  slight- 
est rumor  of  disturbance.  When  the  cigarette  was  finished, 
they  would  contemplate  for  a  long  time  the  work  in  front 
of  them,  and  then  Michael  would  say  he  thought  it  rather 
stupid  to  swat  on  Friday  night  with  all  Saturday  and  Sunday 
before  them,  and  who  did  Alan  think  was  the  better  half- 
back— Rawson  or  Wilding?  This  question  led  to  a  long 
argument  before  Raw^son  was  adjudged  to  be  the  better 
of  the  two.  Then  Alan  would  bet  Michael  he  could  not 
write  down  from  memory  the  Nottinghamshire  cricket  team, 
and  Michael  w^ould  express  his  firm  conviction  that  Alan 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY 203 

could  not  possibly  name  the  winners  of  the  Oxford  and 
Cambridge  quarter-mile  for  the  last  three  years.  Finally 
they  would  both  recur  to  the  problem  ever  present,  the 
best  way  to  obtain  two  bicycles  and,  what  was  more  impor- 
tant, the  firm  they  would  ultimately  honor  with  their 
patronage.  The  respective  merits  of  the  Humber,  the 
Rover,  the  Premier,  the  Quadrant,  the  Swift  and  the 
Sunbeam  created  a  battleground  for  various  opinions, 
and,  as  for  the  tires,  it  seemed  impossible  to  decide  between 
Palmers,  Clinchers  and  Dunlops.  In  the  middle  of  the  dis- 
cussion, the  clock  in  the  passage  would  strike  ten,  at  which 
Michael  and  Allan  would  yawn  and  dawdle  their  way  up- 
stairs. Perhaps  the  bicycle  problem  had  a  wearing  effect, 
for  Mrs.  Fane  would  remark  on  their  faded  appearance 
and  hope  they  were  not  working  too  hard.  Michael  and 
Allan  would  look  particularly  conscious  of  their  virtue 
and  admit  they  had  had  a  very  tiring  week,  what  with  foot- 
ball and  Cicero  and  quadratic  equations;  and  so  after 
affectionate  good  nights  they  would  saunter  up  to  bed. 
Upstairs,  they  would  lean  out  of  the  bedroom  window 
and  watch  the  golden  trains  go  by,  and  ponder  the  changing 
emeralds  and  rubies  of  the  signal-box  farther  along  the  line  ; 
then  after  trying  to  soak  a  shadowy  tomcat  down  below 
with  water  from  the  toilet-jug  Michael  and  Alan  would 
undress. 

In  the  darkness  Michael  and  Alan  would  lie  side  by  side 
secure  in  a  companionship  of  dreams.  They  murmured 
now  their  truly  intimate  thoughts;  they  spoke  of  their  hopes 
and  ambitions,  of  the  army  with  its  glories  of  rank  and 
adventure,  of  the  woods  and  forests  of  India,  of  treasure 
on  coral  islands  and  fortunes  in  the  canons  of  the  West. 
They  spoke  of  the  School  Fifteen  and  of  Alan's  probable 
captaincy  of  it  one  day;  they  discussed  the  Upper  Sixth 
with  its  legend  of  profound  erudition;  they  wondered  if 
it  would  be  worth  while  for  Michael  to  swat  and  be  Captain 


204  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

of  the  School.  They  talked  again  of  bicycles  and  decided 
to  make  an  united  effort  to  secure  them  this  ensuing  Christ- 
mas by  compounding  for  one  great  gift  any  claims  they 
possessed  on  birthday  presents  later  in  the  year.  They 
talked  of  love,  and  of  the  fools  they  had  been  to  waste  their 
enthusiasm  on  Dora  and  Winnie.  They  made  up  their  minds 
to  forswear  the  love  of  women  with  all  its  humiliations 
and  disappointments  and  futilities.  Through  life  each  would 
be  to  the  other  enough.  Girls  would  be  forever  an  intru- 
sion between  such  deathless  and  endeared  friends  as  they 
w^ere.  Michael  pointed  out  how  awkward  it  would  be  if 
he  and  Alan  both  loved  the  same  girl  and  showed  how  it 
w^ould  ruin  their  twin  lives  and  wreck  their  joint  endeavor; 
while  Alan  agreed  it  would  be  mad  to  risk  a  separation 
for  such  froth  of  feminine  attractiveness.  The  two  of 
them  vowed  in  the  darkness  to  stick  always  together,  so  that 
whatever  fate  life  held  for  either  it  should  hold  for  both. 
They  swore  fidelity  to  their  friendship  in  the  silence  and 
intimacy  of  the  night;  and  when,  rosy  in  the  morning, 
they  stood  up  straightly  in  the  pale  London  sunlight, 
they  did  not  regret  the  vows  of  the  night,  nor  did  they 
blush  for  their  devotion,  since  the  world  conjured  a  long 
vista  of  them  both  arm  in  arm  eternally,  and  in  the  imme- 
diate present  all  the  adventurous  charm  of  a  Saturday's 
whole  holiday. 

If  there  was  a  First  Fifteen  match  on  the  School  ground, 
Michael  and  Alan  honored  it  with  their  attendance  and 
liked  nothing  so  wtII  as  to  elbow  their  way  through  a  mob  of 
juniors  in  order  to  nod  familiarly  to  a  few  members  of  the 
Fifteen.  The  School  team  that  year  was  not  so  successful 
as  its  two  predecessors,  and  Michael  and  Alan  were  often 
compelled  to  voice  their  disdain  to  the  intense  disgust  of 
the  juniors  huddled  about  them.  Sometimes  they  would 
hear  an  irreverent  murmur  of  "Hark  at  sidey  Fane  and 
sidey  Merivale,"  which  would  necessitate  the  punching  of  a 


BOYHOOD'S   GLORY  205 

number  of  heads  to  restore  the  disciplinary  respect  they 
demanded.  On  days  when  the  School  team  was  absent 
at  Dulford  or  Tonbury  or  Haileybridge,  Michael  and  Alan 
would  scornfully  glance  at  the  Second  Fifteen's  desolate 
encounter  with  some  other  Second  Fifteen,  and  vote  that 
such  second-rate  football  was  bally  rot.  On  such  occasions 
the  School  ground  used  to  seem  too  large  and  empty  for 
cheerfulness,  and  the  two  friends  would  saunter  round 
West  Kensington  on  the  chance  of  an  adventure,  ending 
up  the  afternoon  by  laying  out  money  on  sweets  or  on  the 
fireworks  now  displayed  in  anticipation  of  the  Fifth  of 
November.  Saturday  evening  would  be  spent  in  annoying 
the  neighbors  with  squibs  and  Chinese  crackers  and  jumping 
crackers  and  tourbillons  and  maroons  and  Roman  candles 
and  Bengal  lights,  while  after  dinner  the  elaborate  prepara- 
tions for  home  work  would  again  be  made  with  the  same 
inadequate  result. 

On  Sunday  Michael  and  Alan  used  to  brush  their  top- 
hats  and  button  their  gloves  and  tie  their  ties  very  carefully 
and,  armed  with  sticks  of  sobriety  and  distinction,  swagger 
to  whatever  church  was  fashionable  among  their  friends. 
During  the  service  they  w^ould  wink  to  acquaintances 
and  nudge  each  other  and  sing  very  loudly  and  clearly 
their  favorite  hymns,  while  through  the  dull  hymns  they 
would  criticise  their  friends'  female  relations.  So  the  week 
would  fulfil  its  pleasant  course  until  nine  o'clock  on  Monday 
morning,  when  Michael  and  Alan  would  run  all  the  way  to 
school  and  in  a  fever  of  industry  get  through  their  home 
work  with  the  united  assistance  of  the  rest  of  the  Upper 
Fourth  A,  as  one  by  one  the  diligent  members  arrived  in 
Hall  for  a  few  minutes'  gossip  before  Prayers.  During 
Prayers,  Michael  and  Alan  would  try  to  forecast  by  marking 
off  the  full  stops  w^hat  paragraph  of  Cicero  they  w^ould  each 
be  called  upon  to  construe;  finally,  when  old  Caryll  named 
Merivale  to  take  up  the  oration's  thread,   Michael  would 


2o6  YOUTH'S  ENCOUNTER 

hold  the  crib  on  his  knees  and  over  Levy's  laborious  back 
Vi^hisper  in  the  voice  of  a  ghoul  the  meaning. 

At  Christmas,  after  interminable  discussion  and  innumer- 
able catalogs,  the  bicycles  vi^ere  bought,  and  in  the  Lent 
term  with  its  lengthening  twilights  Michael  and  Alan 
devoted  all  their  attention  to  bicycling,  except  in  wet 
weather,  when  they  played  Fives,  bagging  the  covered 
courts  from  small  boys  who  had  waited  days  for  the  chance 
of  playing  in  them.  Michael,  during  the  Lent  term,  often 
rode  back  with  Alan  after  School  to  spend  the  week-end 
at  Richmond,  and  few  delights  were  so  rare  as  that  of 
scorching  over  Barnes  Common  and  down  the  Mortlake 
Road  with  its  gardens  all  a-blow  with  spring  flowers  and 
on  the  other  bank  of  the  river  over  Kew,  the  great  spring 
skies  keeping  pace  with  their  whirring  wheels. 

Yet  best  of  all  was  the  summer  term,  that  glorious  azure 
summer  term  of  fourteen  and  a  half,  which  fled  by  in  a 
radiancy.  Michael  and  Alan  were  still  in  the  Upper  Fourth 
A  under  Mr.  Caryll;  they  still  fooled  away  the  hours  of 
school,  relying  upon  the  charm  of  their  joint  personality 
to  allay  the  extreme  penalty  of  being  sent  up  to  the  Head- 
master for  incorrigible  knavery.  They  were  Captain  and 
Vice-Captain  of  the  Classical  Upper  Fourth  Second  Eleven, 
preferring  the  glory  of  leadership  to  an  ambiguous  position 
in  the  tail  of  the  First  Eleven.  Michael  and  Alan  were  in 
their  element  during  that  sunburnt  hour  of  cricket  before 
afternoon  school.  They  wore  white  felt  hats,  and  Michael 
in  one  of  his  now  rare  flights  of  imagination  thought  that 
Alan  in  his  looked  like  Perseus  in  a  Flaxman  drawing. 
Many  turned  to  look  at  the  two  friends,  as  enlaced  they 
wandered  across  the  "gravel"  on  their  way  to  change  out 
of  flannels,  Michael  nut-brown  and  Alan  rose-bloomed  like 
a  peach. 

At  five  o'clock  they  would  eat  a  rowdy  tea  in  the  School 
tuckshop   to  the  accompaniment  of   flying  pellets  of  bun, 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY  207 

after  which  they  would  change  again  for  amber  hours  of 
cricket,  until  the  sun  made  the  shadow  of  the  stumps  as 
long  as  telegraph  poles,  and  the  great  golden  clock  face  in 
the  School  buildings  gleamed  a  late  hour.  They  would 
part  from  each  other  with  regret  to  ride  off  in  opposite 
directions.  Michael  would  linger  on  his  journey  home 
through  the  mellow  streets  of  Kensington,  writing  with  his 
bicycle  wheels  lazy  parabolas  and  curves  in  the  dust  of  each 
quiet  road.  Twilight  was  not  far  off,  the  murmurous  twi- 
light of  a  London  evening  with  its  tranced  lovers  and  wink- 
ing stars  and  street-lamps  and  window-panes.  More  and 
more  slowly  Michael  would  glide  along,  loth  to  desert  the 
dreaming  populations  of  dusk.  He  would  turn  down  unfre- 
quented corners  and  sail  by  unfamiliar  terraces,  aware  of 
nothing  but  the  languors  of  effortless  motion.  Time,  passing 
by  in  a  sensuous  oblivion,  made  Michael  as  much  a  part  of 
the  nightfall  as  the  midges  that  spun  incessantly  about 
his  progress.  Then  round  a  corner  some  night-breeze  would 
blow  freshly  in  his  face;  he  would  suddenly  realize  it  was 
growing  late  and,  pressing  hard  the  pedals  of  his  bicycle,  he 
would  dart  home,  swift  as  a  bird  that  crosses  against  the 
dying  glow  of  the  sunset. 

Michael's  mother  was  always  glad  to  see  him  and  always 
glad  when  he  sat  with  her  on  the  balcony  outside  the  draw- 
ing-room. If  he  had  wanted  to  cross-examine  her,  he  would 
have  found  an  easy  witness,  so  tranquil  and  so  benignant 
that  year  was  every  night  of  June  in  London.  But  Michael 
had  for  the  time  put  aside  all  speculation  and  drugged 
his  imagination  with  animal  exercise,  allowing  himself  no 
time  to  think  of  anything  but  the  present.  He  was  dimly 
aware  of  trouble  close  at  hand,  when  the  terminal  examina- 
tions should  betray  his  idleness;  but  it  was  impossible  to 
worry  over  what  was  now  sheerly  inevitable.  This  summer 
term  was  perfect,  and  why  should  one  consider  ultimate 
time?      Even    Stella's   holidays    from    Germany   had    been 


2o8  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

postponed,  as  if  there  were  a  veritable  conspiracy  by  cir- 
cumstances to  wave  away  the  least  element  of  disturbance. 
Next  Saturday  he  and  Alan  were  going  to  spend  the  day 
in  Richmond  Park;  and  w^hen  it  came  in  its  course  what  a 
day  it  was.  The  boys  set  out  directly  after  breakfast 
and  walked  through  the  pungent  bracken,  chasing  the  deer 
and  the  dragonflies  as  if  there  were  nothing  to  distinguish 
them.  Down  streamed  the  sun  from  the  blue  July  heavens; 
but  Michael  and  Alan  clad  in  white  went  careless  of  the 
heat.  They  walked  over  the  grass  uphill  and  ran  down 
through  the  cool  dells  of  oak  trees,  down  toward  the  glassy 
ponds  to  play  "ducks  and  drakes"  in  the  flickering  weather. 
They  stood  by  the  intersecting  carriage-roads  and  mocked 
the  perspiring  travelers  in  their  black  garments.  They 
cared  for  nothing  but  being  alive  in  Richmond  Park  on  a 
summer  Saturday  of  London.  At  last,  near  a  shadowy  wood- 
land, where  the  grasses  grew  very  tall,  Michael  and  Alan, 
smothering  the  air  with  pollen,  flung  themselves  down  into 
the  fragrancy  and,  while  the  bees  droned  about  them,  slept 
in  the  sun.  Later  in  the  afternoon,  the  two  friends  sat 
on  the  Terrace  among  the  old  ladies  and  the  old  gentle- 
men, and  the  nurserymaids  and  the  children's  hoops.  Down 
below  the  Thames  sparkled  in  a  deep  green  prospect  of 
England.  An  hour  went  by;  the  old  ladies  and  the  old  gen- 
tlemen and  the  nurser5'mards  and  the  hoops  faded  away  one 
by  one  under  the  darkling  trees.  Down  below,  the  Thames 
threaded  with  shining  curves  a  vast  and  elusive  valley  of 
azure.  The  Thames  died  away  to  a  sheen  of  dusky  silver; 
the  azure  deepened  almost  to  indigo;  lights  flitted  into  ken 
one  by  one;  there  traveled  up  from  the  river  a  sound  of 
singing,  and  somewhere  in  the  houses  behind  a  piano  began 
to  tinkle.  Michael  suddenly  became  aware  that  the  end  of 
the  summer  term  was  in  sight.  He  shivered  in  the  dewfall 
and  put  his  arm  round  Alan's  neck  affectionately  and  inti- 
mately; only  profound   convention  kept  him   from  kissing 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY  209 

his  friend  and  by  not  doing  so  he  felt  vaguely  that  something 
was  absent  from  this  perfection  of  dusk.  Something  in 
Michael  at  that  moment  demanded  emotional  expression, 
and  from  afternoon  school  of  yesterday  recurred  to  his  mind 
a  note  to  some  lines  in  the  Sixth  i^neid  of  Virgil.  He  re- 
membered the  lines,  having  by  some  accident  learned  his 
repetition  for  that  day: 

Hue  omnis  turba  ad  ripas  eifusa  ruebat, 
Matres  atque  viri  defunctaque  corpora  vita 
Magnanimum  heroum,  pueri  innuptaeque  puellae, 
Impositique    rogis   juvenes    ante   ora    parentum; 
Quam  multa  in  silvis  auctumni  frigore  primo 
Lapsa  cadunt  folia,   aut  ad  terram   gurgite  ab   alto 
Quam  mult^e  glomerantur  aves  ubi  frigidus  annus 
Trans  pontum  fugat  et  terris  immittit  apricis. 

Compare,  said  the  commentator,  Milton,  Paradise  Lost, 
Book  L 

Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Vallombrosa. 

As  Michael  mentally  repeated  the  thunderous  English 
line,  a  surge  of  melancholy  caught  him  up  to  overwhelm 
his  thoughts.  In  some  way  those  words  expressed  what  he 
was  feeling  at  this  moment,  so  that  he  could  gain  relief 
from  the  poignancy  of  his  joy  here  in  the  darkness  close 
to  Alan  with  the  unfathomable  valley  of  the  Thames  be- 
neath, by  saying  over  and  over  again: 

Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Vallombrosa. 

"Damn,    damn,    damn,    damn,"    cried    Alan    suddenly. 
*'Exams  on  Monday!     Damn,  damn,  damn,  damn." 
"I  must  go  home  and  swat  to-night,"  said  Michael. 


210  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"So  must  I,"  sighed  Alan. 

"Walk  with  me  to  the  station,"  Michael  asked. 

"Oh,  rather,"  replied  Alan. 

Soon  Michael  was  jolting  back  to  Kensington  in  a  stuffy 
carriage  of  hot  Richmond  merrymakers,  while  all  the  time 
he  sat  in  the  corner,  saying  over  and  over  again: 

Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Vallombrosa. 

All  Saturday  night  and  all  Sunday  Michael  worked  breath- 
lessly for  those  accursed  examinations;  but  at  the  end  of 
them  he  and  Alan  were  bracketed  equal,  very  near  the  tail 
of  the  Upper  Fourth  A.  Dr.  Brownjohn  sent  for  each  of 
them  in  turn,  and  each  of  them  found  the  interview  very 
trying. 

"What  do  you  mean  by  it.'*"  roared  the  Headmaster 
to  Michael.  "What  do  you  mean  by  it,  you  young  black- 
guard? Um?  Look  at  this  list.  Um?  It's  a  contemp- 
tible position  for  a  Scholar.  Down  here  with  a  lump  of 
rabbits'  brains,  you  abominable  little  loafer.  Um?  If 
you  aren't  in  the  first  five  boys  of  the  Lower  Fifth  next 
term,  I'll  kick  you  off  the  Foundation.  What  good  are  you 
to  the  School?     Um?     None  at  all." 

As  Dr.  Brownjohn  bellowed  forth  this  statement,  his 
mouth  opened  so  wide  that  Michael  instinctively  shrank 
back  as  if  from  a  crater  in  eruption. 

"You  don't  come  here  to  swagger  about,"  growled  the 
Headmaster.  "You  come  here  to  be  a  credit  to  your  school. 
You  pestilent  young  jackanapes,  do  you  suppose  I  haven't 
noticed  your  idleness!  Um?  I  noticed  everything.  Get 
out  of  my  sight  and  take  your  hands  out  of  your  pockets, 
you  insolent  little  lubber.    Um?" 

Michael  left  the  Headmaster's  room  with  an  expression 
of  tragic  injury;  in  the  corridor  was  a  group  of  juniors. 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY  211 

"What  the  devil  are  you  kids  hanging  about  here  for?" 
Michael  demanded. 

"All  right,  sidey  Fane,"  they  burbled.  Michael  dashed 
into  the  group  and  grabbed  a  handful  of  caps  which  he 
tossed  into  the  dusty  complications  of  the  Laocoon.  To 
their  lamentations  he  responded  by  thrusting  his  hands 
deep  down  into  his  pockets  and  whistling,  "Little  Dolly 
Daydreams,  pride  of  Idaho."  The  summer  term  would 
be  over  in  a  few  days,  and  Michael  was  sorry  to  say  good- 
bye to  Alan,  who  was  going  to  Norway  with  his  father  and 
mother  and  would  therefore  not  be  available  for  the  whole 
of  the  holidays.  Indeed,  he  was  leaving  two  days  before 
School  actually  broke  up.  Michael  was  wretched  without 
Alan  and  brooded  over  the  miseries  of  life  that  so  soon 
transcended  the  joys.  On  the  last  day  of  term  he  was 
seized  with  an  impulse  to  say  good-bye  to  Mr.  Caryll, 
an  impulse  which  he  could  not  understand  and  was  inclined 
to  deplore.  However,  it  was  too  strong  for  his  conventions, 
and  he  loitered  behind  in  the  confusion  of  merry  departures. 

"Good-bye,  sir,"  he  said  shyly. 

Mr.  Caryll  took  off  two  pairs  of  spectacles  and  examined 
Michael  through  the  remaining  pair,  rasping  out  the  familiar 
cough  as  he  did  so. 

"Now,  you  great  booby,  what  do  you  want?"  he  asked. 

"Good-bye,  sir,"  Michael  said,  more  loudly. 

"Oh,  good-bye,"  said  Mr.  Caryll.  "You've  been  a  very 
idle  boy" — cough — cough — "and  I" — cough — cough — "I 
don't  think  I  ever  knew  such  an  idle  boy  before." 

"I've  had  a  ripping  time  in  your  class,  sir,"  said  Michael. 

"What  do  you  mean?" — cough — cough — "are  you  trying 
to  be  impudent?'*  exclaimed  Mr.  Caryll,  hastily  putting 
on  a  second  pair  of  spectacles  to  cope  with  the  situation. 

"No,  sir.  I've  enjoyed  being  in  your  class.  I'm  sorry 
I  was  so  low  down  in  the  list.     Good-bye,  sir." 

Mr.  Caryll  seemed  to  realize  at  last  that  Michael  was 


212  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

being  sincerely  complimentary,  so  he  took  of^  all  the  pairs 
of  spectacles  and  beamed  at  him  with  an  expression  of  the 
most  profound  benignity. 

"Oh,  well" — cough — cough — "we  can't  all  be  top" — 
cough — cough — "but  it's  a  pity  you  should  be  so  very  low 
down" — cough — cough — "you're  a  Scholar  too,  which  makes 
it  much  worse.  Never  mind.  Good  boy  at  heart" — cough — 
cough — "better  luck  in  your  next  form" — cough — cough. 
"Hope  you'll  enjoy  yourself  on  your  holidays." 

"Good-bye,  sir.  Thanks  awfully,"  said  Michael.  He 
turned  away  from  the  well-loved  class-room  of  old  Caryll 
that  still  echoed  with  the  laughter  of  the  Upper  Fourth  A. 

"And  don't  work  too  hard" — cough — cough,  was  Mr. 
Caryll's  last  joke. 

In  the  corridor  Michael  caught  up  the  lantern-jawed  boy 
who  had  prophesied  this  year's  pleasure  at  the  beginning 
of  last  autumn. 

"Just  been  saying  good-bye  to  old  Christmas,"  Michael 
volunteered. 

"He's  a  topper,"  said  Lantern-jaws.  "The  best  old  boy 
that  ever  lived.  I  wish  I  was  going  to  be  in  his  form  again 
next  term." 

"So  do  I,"  said  Michael.  "We  had  a  clinking  good  time. 
So  long.     Hope  you'll  have  decent  holidays." 

"So  long,"  said  the  lantern-jawed  boy  lugubriously, 
dropping  most  of  his  mathematical  books.     "Same  to  you." 

When  Michael  was  at  home  he  took  a  new  volume  of 
Henty  into  the  garden  and  began  to  read.  Suddenly  he 
found  he  was  bored  by  Henty.  This  knowledge  shocked 
him  for  the  moment.  Then  he  went  indoors  and  put  For 
Name  and  Fame,  or  Through  Afghan  Passes  back  on  the 
shelf.  He  surveyed  the  row  of  Henty's  books  gleaming 
with  olivine  edges,  and  presently  he  procured  brown  paper 
and  with  Cook's  assistance  wrapped  up  the  dozen  odd  vol- 
umes.    At  the  top  he  placed  a  slip  of  paper  on  which  was 


BOYHOOD'S    GLORY  213 

written  'Tresented  to  the  Boys'  Library  by  C.  M.  S.  Fane." 
Michael  was  now  in  a  perplexity  for  literary  recreation 
until  he  remembered  Don  Quixote.  Soon  he  was  deep  in 
that  huge  volume,  out  of  the  dull  world  of  London  among 
the  gorges  and  chasms  and  waterfalls  of  Castile.  Boyhood's 
zenith  had  been  attained:  Michael's  imagination  was 
primed  for  strange  emotions. 


CHAPTER  V 

INCENSE 

STELLA  came  back  from  Germany  less  foreign-looking 
than  Michael  expected,  and  he  could  take  a  certain 
amount  of  pleasure  in  her  company  at  Bournemouth. 
For  a  time  they  were  well  matched,  as  they  walked  with 
their  mother  under  the  pines.  Once,  as  they  passed  a  bunch 
of  old  ladies  on  a  seat,  Stella  said  to  Michael: 

"Did  you  hear  what  those  people  said?" 

Michael  had  not  heard,  so  Stella  whispered: 

"They  said,  'What  good-looking  children !'  Shall  we  turn 
back  and  walk  by  them  again?" 

"Whatever  for?"  Michael  demanded. 

"Oh,  I  don't  know,"  said  Stella,  flapping  the  big  violet 
bows  in  her  chestnut  hair.  "Only  I  like  to  hear  people 
talking  about  me.  I  think  it's  interesting.  I  always  try  to 
hear  what  they  say  when  I'm  playing." 

"Mother,"  Michael  appealed,  "don't  you  think  Stella 
ought  not  to  be  so  horribly  conceited?     I  do." 

"Darling  Stella,"  said  Mrs.  Fane,  "I'm  afraid  people 
spoil  her.     It  isn't  her  fault." 

"It  must  be  her  fault,"  argued  Michael. 

Michael  remembered  Miss  Carthew's  admonition  not  to 
snub  Stella,  but  he  could  not  help  feeling  that  Miss  Carthew 
herself  would  have  disapproved  of  this  open  vanity.  He 
wished  that  Miss  Carthew  were  not  now  Mrs.  Ross  and 
far  away  in  Edinburgh.  He  felt  almost  a  responsibility  with 
regard  to  Stella,  a  highly  moral  sensation  of  knowing  better 

214 


INCENSE  215 


the  world  and  its  pitfalls  than  she  could.  He  feared  for 
the  effect  of  its  lure  upon  Stella  and  her  vanity,  and  was 
very  anxious  his  sister  should  always  comport  herself  with 
credit  to  her  only  brother.  In  his  mother's  attitude  Michael 
seemed  to  discern  a  dangerous  inclination  not  to  trouble 
about  Stella's  habit  of  thought.  He  resolved,  when  he  and 
Stella  were  alone  together,  to  address  his  young  sister  seri- 
ously. Stella's  nonchalance  alarmed  him  more  and  more 
deeply  as  he  began  to  look  back  at  his  own  life  and  to  survey 
his  wasted  years.  Michael  felt  he  must  convince  Stella  that 
earnestness  was  her  only  chance. 

"You're  growing  very  fast,  Michael,"  said  his  mother 
one  morning.  "Really  I  think  you're  getting  too  big  for 
Etons." 

Michael  critically  examined  himself  in  his  mother's  toilet- 
glass  and  had  to  admit  that  his  sleeves  looked  short  and 
that  his  braces  showed  too  easily  under  his  waistcoat.  The 
fact  that  he  could  no  longer  survey  his  reflection  calmly, 
and  that  he  dreaded  to  see  Stella  admire  herself,  showed  him 
something  was  wrong. 

"Perhaps  I'd  better  get  a  new  suit,"  he  suggested. 

In  his  blue  serge  suit,  wearing  what  the  shops  called  a 
Polo  or  Shakespeare  collar,  Michael  felt  more  at  ease,  al- 
though the  sleeves  were  now  as  much  too  long  as  lately  his 
old  sleeves  were  too  short.  The  gravity  of  this  new  suit 
confirmed  his  impression  that  age  was  stealing  upon  him 
and  made  him  the  more  inclined  to  lecture  Stella.  This 
desire  of  his  seemed  to  irritate  his  mother,  who  would 
protest : 

"Michael,  do  leave  poor  Stella  alone.  I  can't  think  why 
you've  suddenly  altered.  One  would  think  you'd  got  the 
weight  of  the  world  on  your  shoulders." 

"Like  Atlas,"  commented  Michael  gloomily. 

"I  don't  know  who  it's  like,"  said  Mrs.  Fane.  "But  it's 
very  disagreeable  for  everybody  round  you." 


2i6  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"Michael  always  thinks  he  knows  about  everything," 
Stella  put  in  spitefully. 

*'Oh,  shut  up!"    growled  Michael. 

He  was  beginning  to  feel  that  his  mother  admired  Stella 
more  than  himself,  and  the  old  jealousy  of  her  returned. 
He  was  often  reproved  for  being  untidy  and,  although  he 
was  no  longer  inky  and  grubby,  he  did  actually  find  that  his 
hair  refused  to  grow  neatly  and  that  he  was  growing  clumsy 
both  in  manners  and  appearance.  Stella  always  remained 
cool  and  exasperatingly  debonair  under  his  rebukes,  whereas 
he  felt  himself  growing  hot  and  awkward.  The  old  self- 
consciousness  had  returned  and  with  it  two  warts  on  his 
finger  and  an  intermittent  spot  on  his  chin.  Also  a  down 
was  visible  on  his  face  that  somehow  blunted  his  profile 
and  made  him  more  prone  than  ever  to  deprecate  the  habit 
of  admiring  oneself  in  a  looking-glass.  He  felt  impelled  to 
untie  Stella's  violet  bows  whenever  he  caught  her  posing 
before  the  mirror,  and  as  the  holidays  advanced  he  and  she 
grew^  less  and  less  well  matched.  The  old  worrying  specu- 
lation about  his  father  returned,  together  with  a  wish  that 
his  mother  would  not  dress  in  such  gay  colors.  Michael 
admired  her  slimness  and  tallness,  but  he  wished  that  men 
would  not  turn  round  and  stare  at  her  as  she  passed  them. 
He  used  to  stare  back  at  the  men  with  a  set  frowning  face 
and  try  to  impress  them  with  his  distaste  for  their  manners ; 
but  day  by  day  he  grew  more  miserable  about  his  mother, 
and  would  often  seek  to  dissuade  her  from  what  he  con- 
sidered a  too  conspicuous  hat  or  vivid  ribbon.  She  used  to 
laugh  and  tell  him  that  he  was  a  regular  old  "provincial." 
The  opportunity  for  perfect  confidence  between  Michael 
and  his  mother  seemed  to  have  slipped  by,  and  he  found  it 
impossible  now  to  make  her  talk  about  his  father.  To  be 
sure,  she  no  longer  tried  to  wave  aside  his  inquiries;  but 
she  did  worse  by  answering  "yes"  or  "no"  to  his  questions 


INCENSE  217 


according  to  her  mood,  never  seeming  to  care  whether  she 
contradicted  a  previous  statement  or  not. 

Once,  Michael  asked  straight  out  w^hether  his  father  w^as 
in  prison,  and  he  was  relieved  when  his  mother  rippled  with 
laughter  and  told  him  he  was  a  stupid  boy.  At  the  same 
time,  since  he  had  been  positively  assured  his  father  was 
dead,  Michael  felt  that  laughter,  however  convincing  it 
were,  scarcely  became  a  widow. 

"I  cannot  think  what  has  happened  to  you,  Michael. 
You  were  perfectly  charming  all  last  term  and  never  seemed 
to  have  a  moment  on  your  hands.  Now  you  hang  about  the 
house  on  these  lovely  fine  days  and  mope  and  grumble.  I 
do  wish  you  could  enjoy  yourself  as  you  used  to." 

"Well,  I've  got  no  friends  down  here,"  Michael  declared. 
*'What  is  there  to  do?  I'm  sick  of  the  band,  and  the  niggers 
are  rotten,  and  Stella  always  wants  to  hang  about  on  the 
pier  so  that  people  can  stare  at  her.  I  wish  she'd  go  back 
to  her  glorious  Germany  where  everything  is  so  wonderful." 

"Why  don't  you  read?  You  used  to  love  reading,"  sug- 
gested Mrs.  Fane. 

"Oh,  read!"  exclaimed  Michael.  "There's  nothing  to 
read.     I  hate  Henty.    Always  the  same!" 

"Well,  I  don't  know  anything  about  Henty,  but  there's 
Scott  and  Dickens  and " 

"I've  read  all  them,  mother,"  Michael  interrupted  petu- 
lantly. 

"Well,  why  don't  you  ask  Mrs.  Rewins  if  you  can  borrow 
a  book  from  her,  or  I'll  ask  her,  as  you  don't  like  going 
downstairs." 

Mrs.  Rewins  brought  up  an  armful  of  books  which 
Michael  examined  dismally  one  by  one.  However,  after 
several  gilded  volumes  of  sermons  and  sentimental  Sunday- 
school  prizes,  he  came  across  a  tattered  Newgate  Calendar 
and  Roderick  Random,  both  of  which  satisfied  somewhat  his 
new  craving  for  excitement.  When  he  had  finished  these 
15 


2i8  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

books,  Mrs.  Rewins  invited  him  to  explore  the  cupboard 
in  her  warm  kitchen,  and  here  Michael  found  Peregrine 
Pickle,  Tom  Jones,  a  volume  of  Bentley's  Miscellany  con- 
taining the  serial  of  Jack  Sheppard  by  Harrison  Ainsworth, 
and  What  Every  Woman  of  Forty-five  Ought  to  Knov^r. 
The  last  work  upset  him  very  much  because  he  found  it 
unintelligible  in  parts,  and  v^^here  it  was  intelligible  ex- 
tremely alarming.  An  instinct  of  shamefulness  made  him 
conceal  this  book  in  a  drawer,  but  he  became  very  anxious 
to  find  out  exactly  how  old  his  mother  was.  She,  however, 
was  more  elusive  on  this  point  than  he  had  ever  known  her, 
and  each  elaborate  trap  failed,  even  the  innocent  production 
of  the  table  for  ascertaining  anybody's  age  in  a  blue  six- 
penny Encyclopaedia:  still,  the  Encyclopaedia  was  not  with- 
out its  entertainment,  and  the  table  of  diseases  at  the  end 
was  very  instructive.  Among  the  books  which  Michael  had 
mined  down  in  Mrs.  Rewins'  kitchen  was  The  Ingoldsby 
Legends  illustrated  by  Cruikshank.  These  he  found  very 
enthralling,  for  though  he  was  already  acquainted  with  The 
Jackdaw  of  Rheims,  he  now  discovered  many  other  poems 
still  more  amusing,  in  many  of  which  he  came  across  with 
pleasure  quotations  that  he  remembered  to  have  heard  used 
with  much  effect  by  Mr.  Neech  in  the  Shell.  The  macabre 
and  ghostly  lays  did  not  affect  him  so  much  as  the  legends 
of  the  saints.  These  he  read  earnestly  as  he  read  Don 
Quixote,  discerning  less  of  laughter  than  of  Gothic  adven- 
ture in  their  fantastic  pages,  while  his  brain  was  fired  by  the 
heraldic  pomps  and  ecclesiastical  glories. 

About  this  time  he  happened  to  pay  a  visit  to  Christ- 
church  Priory  and  by  the  vaulted  airs  of  that  sanctuary  he 
was  greatly  thrilled.  The  gargoyles  and  brasses  and  effigies 
of  dead  knights  called  to  him  mysteriously,  but  the  inappro- 
priate juxtaposition  of  an  early  Victorian  tomb  shocked  him 
with  a  sense  of  sacrilege.  He  could  not  bear  to  contem- 
plate the  nautical  trousers  of  the  boy  commemorated.     Yet, 


INCENSE  219 


simultaneously  with  his  outraged  decorum,  he  was  attracted 
to  this  tomb,  as  if  he  detected  in  that  ingenuous  boy  posited 
among  sad  cherubs  some  kinship  with  himself. 

In  bed  that  night  Michael  read  The  Ingoldsby  Legends 
in  a  fever  of  enjoyment,  while  the  shadows  waved  about  the 
ceiling  and  walls  of  the  seaside  room  in  the  vexed  candle- 
light. As  yet  the  details  of  the  poems  did  not  gain  their 
full  effect,  because  many  of  the  words  and  references  were 
not  understood.  He  felt  that  knowledge  was  necessary 
before  he  could  properly  enjoy  the  color  of  these  tales. 
Michael  had  always  been  inclined  to  crystallize  in  one  strong 
figure  of  imagination  his  vague  impressions.  Two  years 
ago  he  had  identified  Mr.  Neech  with  old  prints,  with  Tom 
Brown's  Schooldays  and  with  shelves  of  calf-bound  books. 
Now  in  retrospect  he,  without  being  able  to  explain  his 
reason  to  himself,  identified  Mr.  Neech  with  that  statue 
of  the  trousered  boy  in  Christchurch  Priory,  and  not  merely 
Mr.  Neech  but  even  The  Ingoldsby  Legends  as  well.  He 
felt  that  they  were  both  all  wTong  in  the  sanctified  glooms 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  and  yet  he  rejoiced  to  behold  them 
there,  as  if  somehow  they  were  a  pledge  of  historic  con- 
tinuity. Without  the  existence  of  the  trousered  boy  Michael 
would  scarcely  have  believed  in  the  reality  of  those  stone 
ladies  and  carved  knights.  The  candlelight  fluttered  and 
jigged  in  the  seaside  room,  while  Mr.  Neech,  The  Ingoldsby 
Legends  and  the  oratories  of  Christchurch  became  more  and 
more  hopelessly  confused.  Michael's  excited  brain  was 
formulating  visions  of  immense  cathedrals  beneath  whose 
arches  pattered  continually  the  populations  of  old  prints: 
the  tower  of  St.  Mary's  College,  Oxford,  rose,  slim  and 
lovely,  against  the  storm-wrack  of  a  Dore  sky :  Don  Quixote 
tilted  with  knights-at-arms  risen  from  the  dead.  Michael 
himself  was  swept  along  in  cavalcades  toward  the  clouds 
with  Ivanhoe,  Richard  Coeur  de  Lion,  Roderick  Random 
and  half  a  dozen  woodcut  murderers  from  the  Newgate 


220  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Calendar.  Then,  just  as  the  candlelight  was  gasping  and 
shimmering  blue  in  the  bowl  of  the  candlestick,  he  fell 
asleep. 

In  the  sunshine  of  the  next  day,  Michael  almost  won- 
dered whether  like  someone  in  The  Ingoldsby  Legends  he 
had  ridden  with  witches  on  a  broomstick.  All  the  cool 
security  of  boyhood  had  left  him;  he  was  in  a  turmoil  of 
desire  for  an  astounding  experience.  He  almost  asked  him- 
self what  he  wanted  so  dearly;  and,  as  he  pondered,  out 
of  the  past  in  a  vision  came  the  picture  of  himself  staring 
at  the  boy  who  walked  beside  the  incense  with  a  silver  boat. 
What  did  the  Lay  of  St.  Alois  say? 

This  with  his  chasuble,  this  with  his  rosary. 
This  with  his  incense-pot  holding  his  nose  awry. 

Michael  felt  a  craving  to  go  somewhere  and  smell  that 
powerful  odor  again.  He  remembered  how  the  boy  had  put 
out  his  tongue  and  he  envied  him  such  familiarity  with 
pomps  and  glories. 

"Are  there  any  High  Churches  in  Bournemouth?"  he 
asked  Mrs.  Rewins.  "Very  high.  Incense  and  all  that, 
you  know." 

Mrs.  Rewins  informed  him  there  was  one  church  so  high 
that  some  said  it  was  practically  "Roming  Catholic." 

"Where  is  it?"  asked  Michael,  choking  with  excitement. 
Yet  he  had  never  before  wanted  to  go  to  church.  In  the 
days  of  Nurse  he  had  hated  it.  In  the  days  of  Miss 
Carthew  he  had  only  found  it  endurable,  if  his  friends  were 
present.  He  had  loathed  the  rustle  of  many  women  dressed 
in  their  best  clothes.  He  had  hated  the  throaty  voices  of 
smooth-faced  clergymen.  He  had  despised  the  sleek  choir- 
boys smelling  of  yellow  soap.  Religion  had  been  com- 
pounded of  Collects,  Greek  Testament,  Offertory  Bags,  var- 
nish, qualms  for  the  safety  of  one's  top-hat,  the  pleasure  of 


INCENSE  221 


an  extra  large  hassock,  ambition  to  be  grown  up  and  bend 
over  instead  of  kneeling  down,  the  podgy  feel  of  a  Prayer 
Book,  and  a  profound  disapproval  that  only  Eton  and  Win- 
chester among  public  schools  were  mentioned  in  its  diapha- 
nous fumbling  pages.  Now  religion  should  be  an  adventure. 
The  feeling  that  he  was  embarking  upon  the  unknown 
made  Michael  particularly  reticent,  and  he  was  afraid  to 
tell  his  mother  that  on  Sunday  morning  he  proposed  to 
attend  the  service  at  St.  Bartholomew's,  lest  she  might  sug- 
gest coming  also.  He  did  not  want  to  be  irritated  by 
Stella's  affectations  and  conceit,  nor  did  he  wish  to  notice 
various  women  turning  round  to  study  his  mother's  hat. 
In  the  end  Michael  did  not  go  on  Sunday  to  the  church 
of  his  intention,  because  at  the  last  moment  he  could  not 
brace  himself  to  mumble  an  excuse. 

Late  on  the  afternoon  of  the  following  day  Michael 
walked  through  the  gustiness  of  a  swift-closing  summer 
toward  St.  Bartholomew's,  where  it  stood  facing  a  stretch 
of  sandy  heather  and  twisted  pine  trees  on  the  outskirts  of 
Bournemouth.  The  sky  was  stained  infrequently  with  the 
red  of  a  lifeless  sunset  and,  as  Michael  watched  the  desola- 
tion of  summer's  retreat,  he  listened  sadly  to  the  sibilant 
heather  lisping  against  the  flutes  of  the  pines,  while  from 
time  to  time  the  w^ind  drummed  against  the  buttresses  and 
boomed  against  the  bulk  of  the  church.  Michael  drew 
near  the  west  door,  whose  hinges  and  nails  stood  out  unnat- 
urally distinct  in  the  last  light  of  the  sun.  Abruptly  on  the 
blowy  eve  the  church-bell  began  to  ring,  and  from  various 
roads  Michael  saw  people  approaching,  their  heads  bent 
against  the  gale.  At  length  he  made  up  his  mind  to  follow 
one  of  the  groups  through  the  churchyard  and  presently, 
while  the  gate  rattled  behind  him  in  the  wind,  he  reached 
the  warm  glooms  within.  As  he  took  his  seat  and  perceived 
the  altar  loaded  with  flowers,  dazzling  with  lighted  candles, 
he  wondered  why  this  should  be  so  on  a  Monday  night  in 


222  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

August.  The  air  was  pungent  with  the  smell  of  wax  and 
the  stale  perfume  of  incense  on  stone.  The  congregation 
was  scattered  about  in  small  groups  and  units,  and  the 
vaulted  silence  was  continually  broken  by  coughs  and  sighs 
and  hollow  footsteps.  From  the  tower  the  bell  rang  in 
slow  monotone,  while  the  wind  whistled  and  moaned  and 
flapped  and  boomed  as  if,  thought  Michael,  all  the  devils 
in  hell  were  trying  to  break  into  the  holy  building.  The 
windows  were  now  scarcely  luminous  with  the  wan  shadow 
of  daylight,  and  would  indeed  have  been  opaque  as  coal, 
had  the  inside  of  the  church  been  better  lighted.  But  the 
few  wavering  gas-jets  in  the  nave  made  all  seem  dark  save 
where  the  chancel,  empty  and  candlelit,  shone  and  sparkled 
in  a  radiancy.  Something  in  Michael's  attitude  must  have 
made  a  young  man  sitting  behind  lean  over  and  ask  if  he 
w^anted  a  Prayer  Book.  Michael  turned  quickly  to  see  a 
lean  and  eager  face. 

"Yes,  please.     I  left  mine  at  home,"  he  answered. 

"Well,  come  and  sit  by  me,"  said  the  young  man. 

Michael  changed  his  place  and  the  young  man  talked  in 
a  low  w^hisper,  while  the  bell  rang  its  monotone  upon  the 
gusts  which  swept  howling  round  the  church. 

"Solemn  Evensong  isn't  until  seven  o'clock.  It's  our 
patronal  festival,  St.  Bartholomew's  Day — you  know.  We 
had  a  good  Mass  this  morning.  Every  year  we  get  more 
people.     Do  you  live  in  Bournemouth?" 

"No,"  whispered  Michael.  "I'm  just  here  for  the  holi- 
days." 

"What  a  pity,"  said  the  stranger.  *'We  do  so  want 
servers — you  know — decent-looking  servers.  Our  boys  are 
so  clumsy.  It's  not  altogether  their  fault — the  cassocks — 
you  know — they're  only  in  two  sizes.  They  trip  up.  I'm 
the  Ceremonarius,  and  I  can  tell  you  I  have  my  work  cut 
out.     Of  course,   I   ought  to  have  been   helping  to-night. 


INCENSE  223 


But  I  wasn't  sure  I  could  get  away  from  the  Bank  in  time. 
I  hope  Wilson — that's  our  second  thurifer — won't  go  wrong 
in  the  Magnificat.     He  usually  does." 

The  bell  stopped:  there  was  a  momentary  hush  for  the 
battling  wind  to  moan  louder  than  ever:  then  the  organ 
began  to  play  and  from  the  sacristy  came  the  sound  of  a 
chanted  Amen.  Choristers  appeared,  followed  by  t^vo  or 
three  of  the  clerg\-,  and  when  these  had  taken  their  places, 
a  second  procession  appeared  with  boys  in  scarlet  and  lace 
and  a  tinkling  censer  and  a  priest  in  a  robe  of  blood-red 
velvet  patterned  with  dull  gold. 

"That's  the  new  cope,"  whispered  the  stranger.  "Fine 
work,  isn't  it?" 

"Awfully  decent,"  Michael  whispered  back. 

"All  I  hope  is  the  acolytes  will  remember  to  put  out  the 
candles  immediately  after  the  Third  Collect.  It's  so  im- 
portant," said  the  stranger. 

"I  expect  they  will,"  whispered  Michael  encouragingly. 

Then  the  Office  began,  and  Michael,  waiting  for  a  spir- 
itual experience,  communed  that  night  with  the  saints  of 
God,  as  during  the  Magnificat  his  soul  rose  to  divine  glories 
on  the  fumes  of  the  aspiring  incense.  There  was  a  quality 
in  the  voices  of  the  boys  which  expressed  for  him  more 
beautifully  than  the  full  Sunday  choir  could  have  done  the 
pathos  of  human  praise  and  the  purity  of  his  own  surrender 
to  Almighty  God.  The  splendors  of  the  ]VIagnificat  died 
away  to  a  silence  and  one  of  the  clergy  stepped  from  his 
place  to  read  the  Second  Lesson.  As  he  came  down  the 
chancel  steps,  Michael's  new  friend  whispered: 

"The  censing  of  the  altar  w^as  all  right.  It's  really  a 
good  thing  sometimes  to  be  a  spectator — you  know — one 
sees  more." 

Michael  nodded  a  vague  assent.  Already  the  voice  of 
the  lector  was  vibrating  through  the  church. 


224  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

In  the  end  of  the  sabbath,  as  it  began  to  dawn  towards 
the  first  day  of  the  week,  came  Mary  Magdalene  and 
the  other  Mary  to  see  the  sepulchre. 

Michael  thought  to  himself  how^  he  had  come  to  St.  Bar- 
tholomew's when  Sunday  was  over.     That  was  strange. 

His  countenance  was  like  lightning  and  his  raiment 
white  as  snow:  and  for  fear  of  him  the  keepers  did 
shake,  and  became  as  dead  men. 

"I  wish  that  boy  Wiggins  wouldn't  fidget  with  his 
zuchetto,"  Michael's  friend  observed. 

And  behold,  he  goeth  before  you  into  Galilee;  there 
shall  ye  see  him:   lo,  I  have  told  you. 

Michael  felt  an  impulse  to  sob,  as  he  mentally  offered  the 
best  of  himself  to  the  worship  of  Christ,  for  the  words  of 
the  lesson  were  striking  on  his  soul  like  bells. 

And  when  they  saw  him,  they  worshiped  him:  but 
some  doubted. 

"Now  you  see  the  other  boy  has  started  fidgeting  with 
his,''  complained  the  young  man. 

And,  lo,  I  am  v/ith  you  alway,  even  unto  the  end  of 
the  world.     Amen. 

As  the  lector's  retreating  footsteps  died  away  into  the 
choir,  the  words  were  burned  on  Michael's  heart,  and  for 
the  first  time  he  sang  the  Nunc  Dimittis  with  a  sense  of  the 
privilege  of  personally  addressing  Almighty  God.  When 
the  Creed  was  chanted,  Michael  uttered  his  belief  passion- 
ately, and  w^hile  the  Third  Collect  was  being  read  between 
the  exalted  candles  of  the  acolytes  he  wondered  why  never 
before  had  the  words  struck  him  with  all  their  power 
against  the  fears  and  fevers  of  the  night. 


INCENSE  225 


Lighten  our  darkness,  we  beseech  thee,  O  Lord;  and 
by  thy  great  mercy  defend  us  from  all  perils  and  dangers 
of  this  night,  for  the  love  of  thy  only  Son,  our  Saviour, 
Jesus  Christ.    Amen. 

The  acolytes  lowered  their  candles  to  extinguish  them: 
then  they  darkened  the  altar  while  the  hymn  was  being  sung, 
and  Michael's  friend  gave  a  sigh  of  relief. 

''Perfectly  all  right,"  he  whispered. 

Michael  himself  was  sorry  to  see  the  gradual  extinction 
of  the  altar-lights;  he  had  concentrated  upon  that  radiance 
his  new  desire  of  adoration  and  a  momentary  chill  fell  upon 
him,  as  if  the  fiends  without  were  gaining  strength  and  fury. 
All  dread  and  doubt  was  allayed  when,  after  the  murmured 
Grace  of  Our  Lord,  the  congregation  and  the  choir  and  the 
officiant  knelt  in  a  silent  prayer.  The  wind  still  shrieked 
and  thundered:  the  gas-jets  w^aved  uneasily  above  the  hud- 
idled  forms  of  the  worshipers:  but  over  all  that  incense- 
clouded  gloom  lay  a  spirit  of  tranquillity.  Michael  said 
the  Our  Father  to  himself  and  allowed  his  whole  being  to 
expand  in  a  warmth  of  surrender.  The  purification  of 
sincere  prayer,  voiced  more  by  his  attitude  of  mind  than  by 
any  spoken  w^ord,  made  him  infinitely  at  peace  with  life. 

When  the  choir  and  clergy  had  filed  out  and  the  sacristan 
like  an  old  rook  came  limping  down  the  aisle  to  usher  the 
congregation  forth  into  the  dark  wind  of  Bartlemy-tide, 
Michael's  friend  said: 

''Wait  just  a  minute.  I  want  to  speak  to  Father  Money- 
penny  for  a  moment,  and  then  we  can  walk  back  together." 

Michael  nodded,  and  presently  his  friend  came  back  from 
the  sacristy  with  Father  Moneypenny  in  cassock  and  biretta, 
looking  like  the  photographs  of  clergymen  that  Michael 
remembered  in  Nurse's  album  long  ago. 

"So  you  enjoyed  the  Evensong?"  inquired  the  priest. 
"Capital!  You  must  come  to  Mass  next  Sunday.  There 
will   be  a   procession.     By  the  way,   Prout,   perhaps  your 


226  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

young  friend  would  help  us.  We  shall  want  extra  torch- 
boys." 

Mr.  Prout  agreed,  and  Michael,  although  he  wondered 
what  his  mother  would  say,  was  greatly  excited  by  the  idea. 
They  were  standing  now  by  the  door  of  the  church,  and  as 
it  opened  a  gust  of  wind  burst  in  and  whistled  round  the 
interior.     Father  Moneypenny  shivered. 

"What  a  night.    The  end  of  summer,  I'm  afraid." 

He  closed  the  door,  and  Michael  and  Mr.  Prout  forced 
their  way  through  the  gale  over  the  wet  gravel  of  the 
churchyard.  The  pine  trees  and  the  heather  made  a  melan- 
choly concert,  and  they  were  glad  to  reach  the  blown  lamp- 
light of  the  streets. 

''Will  you  come  round  to  my  place?"  Mr.  Prout  asked. 

"Well,  I  ought  to  go  back.  My  mater  will  be  anxious," 
said  Michael. 

Mr.  Prout  thereupon  invited  him  to  come  round  to- 
morrow afternoon. 

"I  shall  be  back  from  the  Bank  about  five.  Good  night. 
You've  got  my  card?  Bernard  Prout,  Esdraelon,  Saxton 
Road.     Good  night.     Pleased  to  have  met  you." 

Mrs.  Fane  was  surprised  to  hear  of  Michael's  visit  to  St. 
Bartholomew's. 

"You're  getting  so  secretive,  dearest  boy.  I'd  no  idea 
you  were  becoming  interested  in  religion." 

"Well,  it  is  interesting,"  said  Michael. 

"Of  course.  I  know  it  must  be.  So  many  people  think 
of  nothing  else.  And  do  you  really  want  to  march  in  the 
procession?" 

"Yes,  but  don't  you  and  Stella  come,"  Michael  said. 

"Oh,  I  must,  Michael.  I'd  love  to  see  you  in  all  those 
pretty  clothes." 

"Well,  I  can  go  round  and  see  this  chap  Prout,  can't  I  ?" 
Michael  asked. 


INCENSE  227 


"I  suppose  so,"  Mrs.  Fane  replied.  *'Of  course,  I  don't 
know  anything  about  him.     Is  he  a  gentleman?" 

"Of  course  he's  a  gentleman,"  affirmed  Michael  warmly. 
''Besides  I  don't  see  it  matters  a  bit  whether  he's  a  gentle- 
man or  not." 

"No,  of  course  it  doesn't  really,  as  it  all  has  to  do  with 
religion,"  Mrs.  Fane  agreed.  "Nothing  is  so  mixed  as 
religious  society." 

Saxton  Road  possessed  no  characteristic  to  distinguish  it 
from  many  similar  roads  in  Bournemouth.  A  few  hydran- 
geas debated  in  sheltered  corners  whether  they  should  be 
pink  or  blue,  and  the  number  of  each  house  was  subordinate 
to  its  title.  The  gate  of  Esdraelon  clicked  behind  Michael's 
entrance  just  as  the  gate  of  Homeview  or  Ardagh  or  Glen- 
side  would  have  clicked.  By  the  bay-window  of  the  ground 
floor  was  planted  a  young  passion-flower  whose  nursery 
label  lisped  against  the  brick-work,  and  whose  tendrils  were 
flattened  beneath  wads  of  nail-pierced  flannel.  Michael 
was  directed  upstairs  to  Mr.  Prout's  sitting-room  on  the 
first  floor,  where  the  owner  was  arranging  the  teacups. 

"I'm  so  glad  you  were  able  to  come,"  he  said. 

Michael  looked  round  the  room  with  interest,  and  while 
the  tea-cake  slowly  cooled  Mr.  Prout  discussed  with  enthu- 
siasm his  possessions. 

"That's  St.  Bernardine  of  Sienna,"  he  explained,  pointing 
to  a  colored  statuette.  "My  patron,  you  know.  Curious 
I  should  have  been  born  on  his  day  and  be  christened  Ber- 
nard. I  thought  of  changing  my  name  to  Bernardine,  but 
it's  so  difficult  at  a  Bank.  Of  course,  I  have  a  cult  for  St. 
Bernard,  too,  but  I  never  really  can  forgive  him  for  oppos- 
ing the  Immaculate  Conception.  Father  Moneypenny  and 
I  have  great  arguments  on  that  point.  I'm  afraid  he's  a 
little  bit  wobbly.  But  absolutely  sound  on  the  Assumption. 
Oh,  absolutely,  I'm  glad  to  say.  In  fact,  I  don't  mind  tell- 
ing you  that  next  year  we  intend  to  keep  it  as  a  Double  of 


228  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

the  First  Class  with  Octave  whichj  of  course,  it  is.  This 
rosary  is  made  of  olive-wood  from  the  Garden  of  Geth- 
semane  and  I'm  very  anxious  to  get  it  blessed  by  the  Pope. 
Some  friends  of  mine  are  going  to  Rome  next  Easter  with 
a  Polytechnic  tour,  so  I  may  be  able  to  manage  it.  But  it's 
difficult.  The  Cardinals — you  know,"  said  Mr.  Prout 
vaguely.  "They're  inclined  to  be  bitter  against  English 
Catholics.  Of  course,  Vaughan  made  the  mistake  of  his 
life  in  getting  the  Pope  to  pronounce  against  English  Or- 
ders. I  know  a  Roman  priest  told  me  he  considered  it  a 
fatal  move.     However — j^ou're  waiting  for  your  tea?" 

Michael  ate  Mr.  Prout's  bread-and-butter  and  drank  his 
tea,  while  the  host  hopped  from  trinket  to  trinket. 

"This  is  a  sacred  amulet  which  belonged  to  one  of  the 
Macdonalds  who  fought  at  Prestonpans.  I  suppose  you're 
a  Jacobite?  Of  course,  I  belong  to  all  the  Legitimist 
Societies — the  White  Rose,  the  White  Cockade,  the  White 
Carnation.  Every  one.  I  wish  I  were  a  Scotchman,  al- 
though my  grandmother  was  a  Miss  Macmillan,  so  I've 
got  Scotch  blood.     You  are  a  Jacobite,  aren't  you?" 

"Rather,"  said  Michael  as  enthusiastically  as  his  full 
mouth  would  allow  him  to  declare. 

"Of  course,  it's  the  only  logical  political  attitude  for  an 
English  Catholic  to  adopt,"  said  Mr.  Prout.  "All  this 
Erastianism — you  know.  Terrible.  What's  the  Privy 
Council  got  to  do  with  Vestments?  Still  the  Episcopal 
appointments  haven't  been  so  bad  lately.  That's  Lord 
Salisbur}^  Of  course,  we've  had  trouble  with  our  Bishop. 
Oh,  yes.  He  simply  declines  to  listen  to  reason  on  the 
subject  of  Reservation  for  the  Sick.  Personally  I  advised 
Father  Moneypenny  not  to  pay  any  attention  to  him.  I 
said  the  Guild  of  St.  Wilfrid — that's  our  servers'  guild,  you 
know^ — was  absolutely  in  favor  of  defiance,  open  defiance. 
But  one  of  the  churchwardens  got  round  him.  There's 
your   Established    Church.      Money's  what  churchwardens 


INCENSE  229 


think  of — simply  money.  And  has  religion  got  anything  to 
do  with  money?  Nothing.  'Blessed  are  the  poor,'  You 
can't  go  against  that,  as  I  told  Major  Wilton — that's  our 
people's  warden — in  the  sacristy.  He's  a  client  of  ours  at 
the  Bank,  or  I  should  have  said  a  jolly  sight  more.  I 
should  have  told  him  that  in  my  opinion  his  attitude  was 
simony — rank  simony,  and  let  it  go  at  that.  But  I  couldn't 
very  well,  and,  of  course,  it  doesn't  look  well  for  the  Cere- 
monarius  and  the  churchwarden  to  be  bickering  after  Mass. 
By  the  way,  will  you  help  us  next  Sunday?" 

"I'd  like  to,"  said  Michael,  "but  I  don't  know  anything 
about  it." 

"There'll  be  a  rehearsal,"  said  Mr.  Prout.  "And  it's 
perfectly  simple.  You  elevate  your  torch  first  of  all  at  the 
Sanctus  and  then  at  the  Consecration.  And  now,  if  you've 
finished  your  tea,  I'll  show  you  my  oratory.  Of  course, 
you'll  understand  that  I'm  only  in  rooms  here,  but  the 
landlady  is  a  very  pleasant  woman.  She  let  me  plant  that 
passion-flower  in  the  garden.  Perhaps  you  noticed  it?  The 
same  with  this  oratory.  It  was  a  housemaid's  cupboard,  but 
it  was  very  inconvenient — and  there  isn't  a  housemaid  as  a 
matter  of  fact — so  I  secured  it.     Come  along." 

Mr.  Prout  led  the  way  on  to  the  landing,  at  the  end  of 
which  were  two  doors. 

"We  can't  both  kneel  down,  unless  the  door's  open,"  said 
Mr.  Prout.  "But,  when  I'm  alone,  I  can  just  shut  myself 
in." 

He  opened  the  oratory  door  as  he  spoke,  and  Michael 
was  impressed  by  the  appearance  of  it.  The  small  window 
had  been  covered  with  a  rice-paper  design  of  Jesse's  Rod. 

"It's  a  bit  'Protty,'  "  whispered  Mr.  Prout.  "But  I 
thought  it  was  better  than  plain  squares  of  blue  and  red." 

"Much  better,"  Michael  agreed. 

A  ledge  nailed  beneath  the  window  supported  two  brass 
candlesticks  and  a  crucifix.     The  reredos  was  an  Arundel 


230  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

print  of  the  Last  Supper  and  on  corner-brackets  on  either 
side  were  statues  of  the  Immaculate  Conception  and  Our 
Lady  of  Victories.  A  miniature  thurible  hung  on  a  nail 
and  on  another  nail  was  a  holy-water  stoup,  which  Michael 
at  first  thought  was  intended  for  soap.  In  front  of  the  altar 
w^as  a  prie-dieu  stacked  with  books  of  devotion.  There  were 
also  blessed  palms,  very  dusty,  and  a  small  sanctuary  lamp 
suspended  from  the  ceiling.  Referring  to  this,  Mr.  Prout 
explained  that  really  it  came  from  the  Turkish  Exhibition 
at  Earl's  Court,  but  that  he  thought  it  would  do,  as  he  had 
carefully  exorcized  it  according  to  the  use  of  Sarum. 

"Shall  we  say  Vespers?"  suggested  Mr.  Prout.  "You 
know — the  Small  Office  of  the  Blessed  Virgin.  It  won't 
take  long.     We  can  say  Compline  too,  if  you  like." 

"Just  as  you  like,"  said  Michael. 

"You're  sure  you  don't  mind  the  door  being  left  open? 
Because,  you  see,  we  can't  both  get  in  otherwise.  In  fact, 
I  have  to  kneel  sideways  when  I'm  alone." 

"Won't  your  landlady  think  it  rather  rum?"  Michael 
asked. 

"Good  gracious,  no.  Why,  when  we  have  Vespers  of 
St.  Charles  the  Martyr,  I  have  fellows  kneeling  all  the  way 
down  the  stairs,  you  know — members  of  the  White  Rose 
League,  Bournemouth  and  South  of  England  Branch." 

Michael  w^as  handed  a  thin  sky-blue  book  labelled  Office 
of  the  B.V.M. 

"Latin  or  English?"  queried  Mr.  Prout. 

"Whichever  you  like,"  said  Michael. 

"Well,  Latin,  if  you  don't  mind.  I'm  anxious  to  learn 
Latin,  and  I  find  this  is  good  practice." 

"It  doesn't  look  very  good  Latin^^'  said  Michael  doubt- 
fully. 

"Doesn't  it?"  said  Mr.  Prout  "It  ought  to.  It's  the 
right  version." 

"I  expect  this  is  Hellenistic — I  mean  Romanistic — Latin,'* 


INCENSE  231 


said  Michael,  who  was  proud  of  his  momentary  superiority 
in  knowledge.     "Greek  Test  is  Hellenistic  Greek." 

"Do  you  know  Greek?"  asked  Mr.  Prout. 

"A  little." 

Mr.  Prout  sighed. 

When  the  Office  was  concluded,  Michael  promised  he 
would  attend  a  rehearsal  of  next  Sunday's  ceremony  and, 
if  he  felt  at  ease,  the  Solemn  High  Mass  itself.  Mr.  Prout, 
before  Michael  went  away,  lent  him  a  book  called  Ritual 
Reason  Why,  and  advised  him  to  buy  The  Catholic  Religion 
at  One  Shilling,  and  meanwhile  to  practice  direct  Invocation 
of  the  Saints. 

At  home  Michael  applied  himself  with  ardor  to  the  mas- 
tery of  his  religion.  He  wrestled  with  the  liturgical  colors ; 
he  tried  to  grasp  the  difference  between  Transubstantiation, 
Consubstantiation  and  the  Real  Presence;  and  he  congrat- 
ulated himself  upon  being  under  the  immediate  patronage 
of  an  Archangel.  Also  with  Charles  as  his  first  name  he 
felt  he  could  fairly  claim  the  protection  of  St.  Charles  the 
Martyr,  though  later  on  Mr.  Prout  suggested  St.  Charles 
Borromeo  as  a  less  ordinary  patron.  However,  there  was 
more  than  ritualism  in  Michael's  new  attitude,  more  than 
the  passion  to  collect  new  rites  and  liturgies  and  ornaments 
as  once  he  had  collected  the  portraits  of  famous  cricketers 
or  silkworms  or  silver-paper.  To  be  sure,  it  soon  came  to 
seem  to  him  a  terribly  important  matter  whether,  according 
to  the  Roman  sequence,  red  were  worn  at  Whitsuntide  or 
whether,  according  to  Old  English  use,  white  were  the 
liturgical  color.  Soon  he  would  experience  a  shock  of  dis- 
may on  hearing  that  some  reputed  Catholic  had  taken  the 
Ablutions  at  the  wrong  moment,  just  as  once  he  had  been 
irritated  by  ignorant  people  confusing  Mr.  W.  W.  Read 
of  Surrey  with  Read  (M.)  of  the  same  county.  Beyond 
all  this  Michael  sincerely  tried  to  correct  his  morals  and 
manners  in  the  light  of  aspiration  and  faith.     He  experi- 


232  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

enced  a  revolt  against  impurity  of  any  kind  and  was  simul- 
taneously seized  with  a  determination  to  suffer  Stella's  con- 
ceit gladly.  He  really  felt  a  deep-seated  avarice  for  being 
good.  He  may  not  have  distinguished  between  morality 
due  to  emotion  and  morality  wrung  out  of  intellectual 
assent:  but  he  did  know  that  the  Magnificat's  incense  took 
him  to  a  higher  elation  than  Dora's  curly  head  upon  his 
shoulder,  or  even  than  Alan's  bewitching  company.  Under 
the  influence  of  faith,  Michael  found  himself  bursting  with 
an  affection  for  his  mother  such  as  he  had  not  felt  for  a 
long  time.  Indeed  Michael  was  in  a  state  of  love.  He 
loved  the  candles  on  the  altar,  he  loved  his  mother's  beauty, 
he  loved  Stella,  he  loved  the  people  on  the  beach  and  the 
August  mornings  and  the  zest  for  acquiring  and  devouring 
information  upon  every  detail  connected  with  the  Catholic 
religion;  and  out  of  his  love  he  gratified  Mr.  Prout  by 
consenting  to  bear  a  torch  at  the  Solemn  High  Mass  on  the 
Sunday  wnthin  the  octave  of  St.  Bartholomew,  Apostle  and 
Martyr  and  Patron  of  St.  Bartholomew's  Church,  Bourne- 
mouth. 

Michael's  first  High  Mass  was  an  emotional  experience 
deeper  even  that  that  windy  Evensong.  The  church  was 
full  of  people.  The  altar  was  brilliant  with  flowers  and 
lights.  The  sacristy  was  crowded  with  boys  in  scarlet  cas- 
socks and  slippers  and  zuchettos,  quarreling  about  their 
cottas  and  arguing  about  their  heights.  Everybody  had  a 
favorite  banner  which  he  wanted  to  escort  and,  to  compli- 
cate matters  still  farther,  everybody  had  a  favorite  com- 
panion by  whose  side  he  wished  to  walk. 

The  procession  was  marshaled  before  the  altar:  the 
organ  crashed  through  the  church:  the  first  thurifer  started 
off,  swinging  his  censer  toward  the  clouded  roof.  After 
him  went  the  cross  of  ebony  and  silver,  while  one  by  one 
at  regular  intervals  between  detachments  of  the  choir  the 
banners  of  the  saints  floated  into  action.     Michael  escorted 


INCENSE  233 


the  blue  velvet  banner  of  Our  Lady,  triumphant,  crowned, 
a  crescent  moon  beneath  her  feet  and  round  about  her  stars 
and  Cherubim.  The  procession  was  long  enough  to  fill  two 
aisles  at  once,  and  as  Michael  turned  up  the  south  aisle  on 
the  return  to  the  chancel,  he  saw  the  pomp  of  the  proces- 
sion's rear — the  second  thurifer,  Mr.  Prout  in  a  cotta  bor- 
dered by  lace  two  feet  deep,  the  golden  crucifix  aloft,  the 
acolytes  with  their  golden  candlesticks,  the  blood-red  dal- 
matic and  tunicle  of  the  deacon  and  sub-deacon,  and  sol- 
emnly last  of  all  the  blood-red  cope  of  the  celebrant. 
Michael  took  no  pleasure  in  being  observed  by  the  congre- 
gation; he  was  simply  elated  by  the  privilege  of  being  able 
to  express  his  desire  to  serve  God,  and  during  the  Mass, 
when  the  Sanctus  bell  chimed  forth,  he  raised  his  torch 
naturally  to  the  paean  of  the  salutation.  The  service  w^as 
long:  the  music  was  elaborate:  it  was  back-breaking  work 
to  kneel  on  the  chancel  steps  without  support;  but  Michael 
welcomed  the  pain  w^ith  pleasure.  During  the  Elevation  of 
the  Host,  as  he  bowed  his  head  before  the  wonder  of  bread 
and  wine  made  God,  his  brain  reeled  in  an  ecstasy  of  sublime 
worship.  There  was  a  silence  save  for  the  censer  tinkling 
steadily  and  the  low  whispered  words  of  the  priest  and  the 
click  of  the  broken  wafer.  The  candles  burned  with  a 
supernatural  intensity:  the  boys  who  lately  quarreled  over 
precedence  were  hushed  as  angels:  the  stillness  became 
fearful;  the  cold  steps  burned  into  Michael's  knees  and 
the  incense  choked  him.  At  last,  after  an  age  of  adoration, 
the  plangent  appeal  of  the  Agnus  Dei  came  with  a  melody 
that  seemed  the  music  of  the  sobbing  world  from  w^hich 
all  tears  had  departed  in  a  clarity  of  harmonious  sound. 

Before  Michael  left  Bournemouth,  Mr.  Prout  promised 
to  come  and  see  him  in  London,  and  Mr.  Moneypenny 
said  he  would  write  to  a  priest  who  would  be  glad  to  pre- 
pare him  for  Confirmation.  When  Michael  reached  school 
again  he  felt  shy  at  meeting  Alan  who  would  talk  about 
16 


234  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

nothing  but  football  and  was  dismayed  to  find  Michael 
indifferent  to  the  delights  of  playing  three-quarter  on  Mid- 
dle Side.  Michael  deplored  Alan's  failure  to  advance  intel- 
lectually beyond  mere  football,  and  the  two  of  them  tem- 
porarily lost  touch  with  each  other's  ambitions.  Michael 
now  read  nothing  but  ecclesiastical  books,  and  was  greatly 
insulted  by  Mr.  Viner's  elementary  questions.  Mr.  Viner 
was  the  priest  to  whom  Mr.  Moneypenny  had  written  about 
Michael.  He  had  invited  him  to  tea  and  together  they  had 
settled  that  Michael  should  be  confirmed  early  in  the  spring. 
Michael  borrowed  half  a  dozen  books  from  Mr.  Viner  and 
returned  home  to  make  an  attempt  to  convert  the  cook  and 
the  housemaid  to  the  Catholic  faith  as  a  preliminary  to  con- 
verting his  mother  and  Alan.  In  the  end  he  did  actually 
convert  a  boy  in  the  Lower  Fifth  who,  for  his  strange 
beliefs,  suffered  severely  at  the  hands  of  his  father,  a 
Plymouth  Brother.  Michael  wished  that  Stella  had  not 
gone  back  to  Germany,  for  he  felt  that  in  her  he  would 
have  had  a  splendid  object  on  whom  to  practice  his  power 
of  controversy.  At  Mr.  Viner's  house  Michael  met  another 
Jacobean  called  Chator,  in  whom  he  found  a  fellow-enthu- 
siast. Chator  knew  of  two  other  Jacobeans  interested  in 
Church  matters,  Martindale  and  Rigg,  and  the  four  of 
them  founded  a  society  called  De  Rebus  Ecclesiasticis, 
which  met  every  Friday  evening  in  Michael's  room  to  dis- 
cuss the  Catholic  Church  in  all  her  aspects.  The  discus- 
sions were  often  heated  because  Michael  had  violently  Ultra- 
montane leanings,  Chator  was  narrowly  Sarum,  Martindale 
tried  to  preserve  a  happy  mien,  and  Rigg  always  agreed 
with  the  last  speaker.  The  Society  De  Rebus  Ecclesiasticis 
was  splendidly  quixotic  and  gloriously  unrelated  to  the  dead 
present.  To  the  quartet  of  members  Archbishop  Laud 
was  a  far  more  vital  proposition  than  Archbishop  Temple, 
the  society  of  cavaliers  was  more  vividly  realized  than  the 
Fabian   Society.     As  was  to  be  expected   from   Michael's 


INCENSE  235 


preoccupation  with  the  past,  he  became  very  anxious  again 
about  his  parentage.  He  longed  to  hear  that  in  some  way 
he  was  connected  with  Jacobite  heroes  and  the  romantic 
Stuarts.  Mrs.  Fane  was  no  longer  able  to  put  him  off  with 
contradictions  and  vagueness:  Michael  demanded  his  family 
tree.  The  hymn,  ''Faith  of  Our  Fathers,"  ringing  through 
a  Notting  Dale  mission-hall,  moved  him  to  demand  his 
birthright  of  family  history. 

"Well,  I'll  tell  you,  Michael,"  said  his  mother  at  last. 
"Your  father  ought  to  have  been  the  Earl  of  Saxby — only — 
something  went  wrong — some  certificate  or  something." 

"An  Earl?"  cried  Michael,  staggered  by  the  splendid 
news.  "But — but,  mother,  we  met  Lord  Saxby.  Who  was 
that?" 

"He's  a  relation.  Only  please  don't  tell  people  about 
this,  because  they  wouldn't  understand.  It's  all  very  mud- 
dled and  difficult." 

"My  father  ought  to  have  been  Lord  Saxby?  Why 
wasn't  he?    Mother,  was  he  illegitimate?" 

"Michael,  how  can  you  talk  like  that?     Of  course  not." 

Michael  blushed  because  his  mother  blushed. 

"I'm  sorry,  mother,  I  thought  he  might  have  been.  Peo- 
ple are.     You  read  about  them  often  enough." 

Michael  decided  that,  as  he  must  not  tell  Chator,  Martin- 
dale  and  Rigg  the  truth,  he  would,  at  any  rate,  join  himself 
on  to  the  House  of  Saxby  collaterally.  To  his  disappoint- 
ment, he  discovered  that  the  only  reference  in  history  to 
an  Earl  of  Saxby  made  out  that  particular  one  to  be  a 
most  pestilent  roundhead.  So  Michael  gave  up  being  the 
Legitimist  Earl  of  Saxby,  and  settled  instead  to  be  de- 
scended through  the  indiscretion  of  an  early  king  from  the 
Stuarts.  Michael  grew  more  and  more  ecclesiastical  as 
time  went  on.  He  joined  several  Jacobite  societies,  and 
accompanied  Mr.  Prout  on  the  latter's  London  visit  to  a 
reception  at  Clifford's  Inn  Hall  in  honor  of  the  Legitimist 


236  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Emperor  of  Byzantium.  Michael  was  very  much  impressed 
by  kissing  the  hand  of  an  Emperor,  and  even  more  deeply 
impressed  by  the  Scottish  piper,  who  marched  up  and  down 
during  the  light  refreshment  at  one  shilling  a  head  after- 
wards. Mr.  Prout,  accompanied  by  Michael,  Chator,  Mar- 
tindale  and  Rigg,  spent  the  Sunday  of  his  stay  in  town  by 
attending  early  Mass  in  Kensington,  High  Mass  in  Hol- 
born.  Benediction  in  Shoreditch  and  Evensong  in  Padding- 
ton.  He  also  joined  several  more  guilds,  confraternities 
and  societies,  and  presented  Michael  with  one  hair  from  the 
five  hairs  he  possessed  of  a  lock  of  Prince  Charlie's  hair 
(authentic)  before  he  returned  to  Bournemouth.  This 
single  hair  was  a  great  responsibility  to  Michael,  until  he 
placed  it  in  a  silver  locket  to  wear  round  his  neck.  During 
that  year  occurred  what  the  papers  called  a  Crisis  in  the 
Church,  and  Michael  and  his  three  friends  took  in  every 
week  The  Church  Times,  The  Church  Review,  The  Eng- 
lish Churchman,  Church  Bells,  The  Record  and  The  Rock 
in  order  to  play  their  part  in  the  crisis.  They  attended 
Protestant  meetings  to  boo  and  hiss  from  the  gallery  or  to 
applaud  violently  gentlemen  on  their  side  who  rose  to  ask 
the  lecturer  what  they  supposed  to  be  irrefutable  questions. 
In  the  spring  Michael  made  his  first  Confession  and  was 
confirmed.  The  first  Confession  had  more  effect  on  his 
imagination  than  the  Confirmation,  which  in  retrospect 
seemed  chiefly  a  sensation  of  disappointment  that  the  Bishop 
in  view  of  the  crisis  in  the  Church  refused  to  wear  the 
miter  temptingly  laid  out  for  him  by  Mr.  Viner.  The 
Confession,  however,  was  a  true  test  of  Michael's  depth. 
Mr.  Viner  was  by  no  means  a  priest  who  only  thought  of 
candles  and  lace.  He  was  a  gaunt  and  humorous  man, 
ready  to  drag  out  from  his  penitents  their  very  souls. 

Michael  found  that  first  Confession  an  immense  strain 
upon  his  truthfulness  and  pluck,  and  he  made  up  his  mind 
never  to  commit  another  mortal  sin,  so  deeply  did  he  blush 


INCENSE  237 


in  the  agony  of  revelation.  Venial  faults,  viewed  in  the 
aggregate,  became  appalling,  and  the  real  sins,  as  one  by 
one  Michael  compelled  himself  to  admit  them,  stabbed  his 
self-consciousness  w^th  daggers  of  shame.  Michael  had  a 
sense  of  completeness  w^hich  prevented  him  from  making  a 
bad  Confession,  from  gliding  over  his  sins  and  telling  half- 
truths,  and  having  embarked  upon  the  duties  of  his  religion 
he  was  not  going  to  avoid  them.  The  Confession  seemed 
to  last  forever.  Beforehand,  Michael  had  supposed  there 
would  be  only  one  commandment  whose  detailed  sins  would 
make  his  heart  beat  with  the  difficulty  of  confessing  them; 
but  when  he  knelt  in  the  empty  church  before  the  severe 
priest,  every  breach  of  the  other  commandments  assumed  a 
demoniac  importance.  Michael  thought  that  never  before 
could  Father  Viner  have  listened  to  such  a  narration  of 
human  depravity  from  a  boy  of  fifteen,  or  even  from  a  man 
full  grown.  He  half  expected  to  see  the  priest  rise  in  the 
middle  and  leave  his  chair  in  disgust.  Michael  felt  beads 
of  sweat  trickling  from  his  forehead :  the  strain  grew  more 
terrible:  the  crucifix  before  him  gave  him  no  help:  the 
book  he  held  fell  from  his  fingers.  Then  he  heard  the 
words  of  absolution,  tranquil  as  evening  bells.  The  inessen- 
tials of  his  passionate  religion  faded  away  in  the  strength 
and  beauty  of  God's  acceptation  of  his  penitence.  Outside 
in  the  April  sunlight  Michael  could  have  danced  his  exulta- 
tion before  he  ran  home  winged  with  the  ecstasy  of  a  light 
heart. 


CHAPTER    VI 
PAX 

THE  Lower  Fifth  only  knew  Michael  during  the 
Autumn  term.  After  Christmas  he  moved  up  to 
the  Middle  Fifth,  and,  leaving  behind  him  many 
friends,  including  Alan,  he  found  himself  in  an  industrious 
society  concentrated  upon  obtaining  the  Oxford  and  Cam- 
bridge Higher  Certificate  for  proficiency  in  Greek,  Latin, 
Mathematics  and  either  Divinity,  French  or  History.  Re- 
moved from  the  temptations  of  a  merry  company,  Michael 
worked  very  hard  indeed  and  kept  his  brain  fit  by  argument 
instead  of  football.  The  prevailing  attitude  of  himself  and 
his  contemporaries  toward  the  present  was  one  of  profound 
pessimism.  The  scholarship  of  St.  James'  was  deteriorating; 
there  was  a  dearth  of  great  English  poets;  novelists  were 
not  so  good  as  once  they  were  in  the  days  of  Dickens;  the 
new  boys  were  obviously  inferior  to  their  prototypes  in  the 
past;  the  weather  was  growing  worse  year  by  year;  the 
country  was  plunging  into  an  abyss.  In  school  Michael 
prophesied  more  loudly  than  any  of  his  fellow  Jeremiahs, 
and  less  and  less  did  it  seem  worth  while  in  these  Certificate- 
stifled  days  to  seek  for  romance  or  poetry  or  heroism  or 
adventure.  Yet  as  soon  as  the  precincts  of  discipline  and 
study  were  left  behind,  Michael  could  extract  from  life  full 
draughts  of  all  these  virtues. 

Without  neglecting  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Higher 
Certificate,  he  devoured  voraciously  every  scrap  of  informa- 

238 


PAX  239 

tion  about  Catholicism  which  it  was  possible  to  acquire. 
Books  were  bought  in  tawdry  repositories — Catholic  Belief, 
The  Credentials  of  the  Catholic  Church,  The  Garden  of 
the  Soul,  The  Glories  of  Mary  by  S.  Alphonso  Liguori, 
Alban  Butler's  Lives  of  the  Saints,  The  Clifton  Tracts, 
and,  on  his  own  side  of  the  eternal  controversy,  Lee's  Valid- 
ity of  English  Orders,  The  Alcuin  Club  Transactions  with 
many  other  volumes.  Most  of  all  he  liked  to  pore  upon 
the  Tourist's  Church  Guide,  which  showed  with  asterisks 
and  paragraph  marks  and  sections  and  daggers  what 
churches  throughout  the  United  Kingdom  possessed  the  five 
points  of  Incense,  Lights,  Vestments,  Mixed  Chalice  and 
Eastward  Position.  He  found  it  absorbing  to  compare  the 
progress  of  ritual  through  the  years. 

Michael,  as  once  he  had  known  the  ranks  of  the  British 
Army  from  Lance-corporal  to  Field  Marshal,  could  tell  the 
hierarchy  from  Sexton  to  Pope.  He  knew,  too,  as  once  he 
knew  the  history  and  uniform  of  Dragoons,  Hussars  and 
Lancers,  the  history  and  uniform  of  the  religious  orders — 
Benedictines,  Cistercians,  Franciscans,  Dominicans  (how  he 
loved  the  last  in  their  black  and  white  habit,  Domini  canes, 
watchdogs  of  the  Lord),  Carmelites,  Praemonstratensians, 
Augustinians,  Servites,  Gilbertines,  Carthusians,  Redemptor- 
ists.  Capuchins,  Passionists,  Jesuits,  Oblates  of  St.  Charles 
Borromeo  and  the  Congregation  of  St.  Philip  Neri. 
Michael  outvied  Mr.  Prout  in  ecclesiastical  possessions,  and 
his  bedroom  was  nearly  as  full  as  the  repository  from  which 
it  was  stocked.  There  were  images  of  St.  Michael  (his 
own  patron),  St.  Hugh  of  Lincoln  (patron  of  schoolboys), 
and  St.  James  of  Compostella  (patron  of  the  school),  to- 
gether with  Our  Lady  of  Seven  Dolors,  Our  Lady  Star  of 
the  Sea  and  Our  Lady  of  Lourdes,  Our  Lady  of  Perpetual 
Succor,  Our  Lady  of  Victory;  there  were  eikons,  scap- 
ulars, crucifixes,  candlesticks,  the  Holy  Child  of  Prague, 
rosaries,    and    indeed    every   variety   of    sacred    bric-a-brac. 


240  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Michael  slept  in  an  oriental  atmosphere,  because  he  had 
formed  the  habit  of  burning  during  his  prayers  cone-shaped 
pastilles  in  a  saucer.  The  tenuous  spiral  of  perfumed  smoke 
carried  up  his  emotional  apostrophes  through  the  prosaic 
ceiling  of  the  old  night-nursery  past  the  stars,  beyond  the 
Thrones  and  Dominations  and  Seraphim  to  God.  Michael's 
contest  with  the  sins  of  youth  had  become  much  more 
thrilling  since  he  had  accepted  the  existence  of  a  personal 
fiend,  and  in  an  ecstasy  of  temptation  he  would  lie  in  bed 
and  defy  the  Devil,  calling  upon  his  patron  the  Archangel 
to  descend  from  heaven  and  battle  with  the  powers  of  evil 
in  that  airy  arena  above  the  coal-wharf  beyond  the  railway 
lines.  But  the  Father  of  Lies  had  many  tricks  with  which 
to  circumvent  Michael;  he  would  conjure  up  sensuous 
images  before  his  antagonist;  succubi  materialized  as  pretty 
housemaids,  feminine  devils  put  on  tights  and  openwork 
stockings  to  encounter  him  from  the  pages  of  pink  weekly 
papers,  and  sometimes  Satan  himself  would  sit  at  the  foot 
of  his  bed  in  the  darkness  and  tell  him  tales  of  how  other 
boys  enjoyed  themselves,  arguing  that  it  was  a  pity  to  waste 
his  opportunities  and  filling  his  thoughts  with  dissolute 
memories.  Michael  would  leap  from  his  bed  and  pray 
before  his  crucifix,  and  through  the  darkness  angels  and 
saints  would  rally  to  his  aid,  until  Satan  slunk  off  with  his 
tail  between  his  legs,  personally  humiliated. 

At  school  the  fever  of  the  examination  made  Michael 
desperate  with  the  best  intentions.  He  almost  learned  the 
translations  of  Thucydides  and  Sophocles,  of  Horace  and 
Cicero.  He  knew  by  heart  a  meanly  written  Roman  His- 
tory, and  no  passage  in  Corneille  could  hold  an  invincible 
word.  Cricket  was  never  played  that  summer  by  the  Mid- 
dle Fifth;  it  was  more  useful  to  wander  in  corners  of  the 
field,  murmuring  continually  the  tables  of  the  Kings  of 
Judah  from  Maclear's  sad-hued  abstract  of  Holy  Scripture. 
In  the  end  Michael  passed  in  Greek  and  Latin,  in  French 


PAX  241 

and  Divinity  and  Roman  History,  even  in  Algebra  and 
Euclid;  but  the  arithmetical  problems  of  a  Stockbroker,  a 
Paper-hanger  and  a  Housewife  made  all  the  rest  of  his 
knowledge  of  no  account,  and  Michael  failed  to  see  beside 
his  name  in  the  school  list  that  printed  bubble  which  would 
refer  him  to  the  tribe  of  those  who  had  satisfied  the  exam- 
iners for  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Higher  Certificate. 
This  failure  depressed  Michael,  not  because  he  felt  impli- 
cated in  any  disgrace,  but  because  he  wished  very  earnestly 
that  he  had  not  wasted  so  many  hours  of  fine  weather  in 
work.  He  made  up  his  mind  that  the  mistake  should  never 
be  repeated,  and  for  the  rest  of  his  time  at  St.  James'  he 
resisted  all  set  books.  If  Demosthenes  was  held  necessary, 
Michael  would  read  Plato,  and  when  Cicero  was  set 
Michael  would  feel  bound  to  read  Livy. 

Michael  looked  back  on  the  year  with  dissatisfaction,  and 
wondered  if  school  was  going  to  become  more  and  more 
boring  each  new  term  for  nine  more  terms.  The  prospect 
was  unendurably  gray,  and  Michael  felt  that  life  was  not 
worth  living.  He  talked  over  with  Mr.  Viner  the  flatness 
of  existence  on  the  evening  after  the  result  of  the  examina- 
tion was  known. 

"I  swatted  like  anything,"  said  Michael  gloomily.  "And 
what's  the  good?     I'm  sick  of  everything." 

The  priest's  eyes  twinkled,  as  he  plunged  deeper  into  his 
wicker  armchair  and  puffed  clouds  of  smoke  toward  the 
comfortable  shelves  of  books. 

"You  want  a  holiday,"  he  remarked. 

"A  holiday?"  echoed  Michael  fretfully.  "What's  the 
good  of  a  holiday  with  my  mater  at  some  beastly  seaside 
place?" 

"Oh,  come,"  said  the  priest,  smiling.  "You'll  be  able  to 
probe  the  orthodoxy  of  the  neighboring  clergy." 

"Oh,  no,  really,  it's  nothing  to  laugh  at,  Mr.  Viner. 
You've  no  idea  how  beastly  it  is  to  dawdle  about  in  a  crowd 


242  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

of  people,  and  then  at  the  end  go  back  to  another  term  of 
school.  I'm  sick  of  everything.  Will  you  lend  me  Lee's 
Dictionary  of  Ecclesiastical  Terms?"  added  Michael  in  a 
voice  that  contained  no  accent  of  hope. 

"I'll  lend  you  anything  you  like,  my  dear  boy,"  said  the 
priest,  "on  one  condition." 

"What's  that?" 

"Why,  that  you'll  admit  life  holds  a  few  grains  of  con- 
solation." 

"But  it  doesn't,"  Michael  declared. 

"Wait  a  bit,  I  haven't  finished.  I  was  going  to  say — 
when  I  tell  you  that  we  are  going  to  keep  the  Assumption 
this  August." 

Michael's  eyes  glittered  for  a  moment  with  triumph. 

"By  Jove,  how  decent."  Then  they  grew  dull  again. 
"And  I  shan't  be  here.  The  rotten  thing  is,  too,  that  my 
mater  wants  to  go  abroad.  Only  she  says  she  couldn't 
leave  me  alone.     But,  of  course,  she  could  really." 

"Why  not  stay  with  a  friend — the  voluble  Chator,  for 
instance,  or  Martindale,  that  Solomon  of  schoolboys,  or 
Rigg  who  in  Medicean  days  would  have  been  already  a 
cardinal,  so  admirably  does  he  incline  to  all  parties?" 

"I  can't  ask  myself,"  said  Michael.  "Their  people  would 
think  it  rum.  Besides,  Chator's  governor  has  gout,  and  I 
wouldn't  care  to  be  six  weeks  with  the  other  two.  Oh,  I 
do  hate  not  being  grown  up." 

"What  about  your  friend  Alan  Merivale?  I  thought 
him  a  very  charming  youth  and  refreshingly  unpietistic." 

"He  doesn't  know  the  difference  between  a  chasuble  and 
a  black  gown,"  said  Michael. 

"Which  seems  to  me  not  to  matter  very  much  ultimately," 
put  in  Mr.  Viner. 

"No,  of  course,  it  doesn't.  But  if  one  is  keen  on  some- 
thing and  somebody  else  isn't,  it  isn't  much  fun,"  Michael 
explained.     "Besides,  he  can't  make  me  out  nowadays." 


PAX 243 

"Surely  the  incomprehensible  is  one  of  the  chief  charms 
of  faith  and  friendship." 

"And  anyway  he's  going  abroad  to  Switzerland — and  I 
couldn't  possibly  fish  for  an  invitation.  It  is  rotten.  Every- 
thing's always  the  same." 

"Except  in  the  Church  of  England.  There  you  have  an 
almost  blatant  variety,"  suggested  the  priest. 

"You  never  will  be  serious  when  I  want  you  to  be," 
grumbled  Michael. 

"Oh,  yes  I  will,  and  to  prove  it,"  said  Mr.  Viner,  "I'm 
going  to  make  a  suggestion  of  unparagoned  earnestness." 

"What?" 

"Now  just  let  me  diagnose  your  mental  condition.  You 
are  sick  of  everything — Thucydides,  cabbage,  cricket,  school, 
schoolfellows,  certificates  and  life." 

"Well,  you  needn't  rag  me  about  it,"  Michael  inter- 
rupted. 

"In  the  Middle  Ages  gentlemen  in  your  psychical  per- 
plexity betook  themselves  either  to  the  Crusades  or  entered 
a  monastery.  Now,  why  shouldn't  you  for  these  summer 
holidays  betake  yourself  to  a  monastery?  I  will  write  to 
the  Lord  Abbot,  to  your  lady  mother,  and  if  you  consent, 
to  the  voluble  Chator's  lady  mother,  humbly  pointing  out 
and  ever  praying,  etc.,  etc." 

"You're  not  ragging?"  asked  Michael  suspiciously. 
"Besides,  what  sort  of  a  monastery?" 

"Oh,  an  Anglican  monastery;  but  at  the  same  time 
Benedictines  of  the  most  unimpeachable  severity.  In  short, 
why  shouldn't  you  and  Mark  Chator  go  to  Clere  Abbas  on 
the  Berkshire  Downs?" 

"Are  they  strict?"  inquired  Michael.  "You  know,  saying 
the  proper  offices  and  all  that,  not  the  Day  Hours  of  the 
English  Church — that  rotten  Anglican  thing." 

"Strict!"  cried  Mr.  Viner.  "Why,  they're  so  strict  that 
St.  Benedict  himself,  were  he  to  abide  again  on  earth,  would 


244  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

seriously  consider  a  revision  of  his  rules  as  interpreted  by 
Dom  Cuthbert  Manners,  O.S.B.,  the  Lord  Abbot  of  Clere." 

"It  would  be  awfully  ripping  to  go  there,"  said  Michael 
enthusiastically. 

"Well  then,"  said  Mr.  Viner,  "it  shall  be  arranged. 
Meanwhile  confer  with  the  voluble  and  sacerdotal  Chator 
on  the  subject." 

The  disappointment  of  the  ungranted  certificate,  the 
ineffable  tedium  of  endless  school,  seaside  lodgings  and  all 
the  weighty  ills  of  Michael's  oppressed  soul  vanished  on  that 
wine-gold  July  noon  when  Michael  and  Chator  stood  un- 
trammeled  by  anything  more  than  bicycles  and  luggage 
upon  the  platform  of  the  little  station  that  dreamed  its 
trains  away  at  the  foot  of  the  Downs. 

"By  Jove,  we're  just  like  pilgrims,"  said  Michael,  as  his 
gaze  followed  the  aspiring  white  road  which  rippled  up- 
ward to  green  summits  quivering  in  the  haze  of  summer. 
The  two  boys  left  their  luggage  to  be  fetched  later  by  the 
Abbey  marketing-cart,  mounted  their  bicycles,  waved  a 
good-bye  to  the  friendly  porter  beaming  among  the  red 
roses  of  the  little  station  and  pressed  energetically  their 
obstinate  pedals.  After  about  half  a  mile's  ascent  they 
jumped  from  their  machines  and  walked  slowly  upward 
until  the  station  and  clustering  hamlet  lay  breathless  below 
them  like  a  vision  drowned  deep  in  a  crystal  lake.  As  they 
went  higher  a  breeze  sighed  in  the  sun-parched  grasses, 
and  the  lines  and  curves  of  the  road  intoxicated  them  with 
naked  beauty. 

"I  like  harebells  almost  best  of  any  flowers,"  said  Michael. 
"Do  you?" 

"They're  awfully  like  bells,"  observed  Chator. 

"I  wouldn't  care  if  they  weren't,"  said  Michael.  "It's 
only  in  London  I  want  things  to  be  like  other  things." 

Chator  looked  puzzled. 

*'I  can't  exactly  explain  what  I  mean,"  Michael  went  on. 


PAX  245 

"But  they  made  me  want  to  cry  just  because  they  aren't 
like  anything.  You  won't  understand  what  I  mean  if  I 
explain  ever  so  much.  Nobody  could.  But  when  I  see 
flowers  on  a  lovely  road  like  this,  I  get  sort  of  frightened 
whether  God  won't  grow  tired  of  bothering  about  human 
beings.  Because  really,  you  know,  Chator,  there  doesn't 
seem  much  good  in  our  being  on  the  earth  at  all." 

"I  think  that's  a  heresy,"  pronounced  Chator.  "I  don't 
know  which  one,  but  I'll  ask  Dom  Cuthbert." 

"I  don't  care  if  it  is  heresy.  I  believe  it.  Besides,  reli- 
gion must  be  finding  out  things  for  yourself  that  have  been 
found  out  already." 

"Finding  out  for  yourself,"  echoed  Chator  with  a  look 
of  alarm.     "I  say,  j^ou're  an  absolute  Protestant." 

"Oh,  no  I'm  not,"  contradicted  Michael.  "I'm  a 
Catholic." 

"But  you  set  yourself  up  above  the  Church." 

"When  did  I?"  demanded  Michael. 

"Just  now." 

"Because  I  said  that  harebells  were  ripping  flowers?" 

"You  said  a  lot  more  than  that,"  objected  Chator. 

"What  did  I  say?"  Michael  parried. 

"Well,  I  can't  exactly  remember  what  you  said." 

"Then  what's  the  use  of  saying  I'm  a  Protestant?"  cried 
Michael  in  triumph.  "I  think  I'll  play  footer  again  next 
term,"  he  added  inconsequently. 

"I  jolly  well  would,"  Chator  agreed.  "You  ought  to 
have  played  last  football  term." 

"Except  that  I  like  thinking,"  said  Michael.  "Which  is 
rotten  in  the  middle  of  a  game.  It's  jolly  decent  going 
to  the  monastery,  isn't  it?  I  could  keep  walking  on  this 
road  forever  without  getting  tired." 

"We  can  ride  again  now,"  said  Chator. 

"Well,  don't  scorch,  because  we'll  miss  all  the  decent 
flowers  if  you  do,"  said  Michael. 


246  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Then  silently  for  a  while  they  breasted  the  slighter  in- 
cline of  the  summit. 

"Only  six  weeks  of  these  ripping  holidays,"  Michael 
sighed.     "  And  then  damned  old  school  again." 

"Hark!"  shouted  Chator  suddenly.    "I  hear  the  Angelus." 

Both  boys  dismounted  and  listened.  Somewhere,  indeed, 
a  bell  was  chiming,  but  a  bell  of  such  quality  that  the  sound 
of  it  through  the  summer  was  like  a  cuckoo's  song  in  its 
unrelation  to  place.  Michael  and  Chator  murmured  their 
salute  of  the  Incarnation,  and  perhaps  for  the  first  time 
Michael  half  realized  the  mysterious  condescension  of  God. 
Here,  high  up  on  these  downs,  the  Word  became  imaginable, 
a  silence  of  wind  and  sunlight. 

"I  say,  Chator,"  Michael  began. 

"What?" 

"Would  you  mind  helping  me  mark  this  place  where  we 
are?" 

"Why?" 

"Look  here,  you  won't  think  I'm  pretending,  but  I  be- 
lieve I  was  converted  at  that  moment." 

Chator's  well-known  look  of  alarm  that  always  followed 
one  of  Michael's  doctrinal  or  liturgical  announcements  was 
more  profound  than  it  had  ever  been  before. 

"Converted?"  he  gasped.     "What  to?" 

"Oh,  not  to  anything,"  said  Michael.  "Only  different 
from  what  I  was  just  now,  and  I  want  to  mark  the  place." 

"Do  you  mean — put  up  a  cross  or  something?" 

"No,  not  a  cross.  Because,  when  I  was  converted,  I  felt 
a  sudden  feeling  of  being  frightfully  alive.  I'd  rather  put  a 
stone  and  plant  harebells  round  it.  We  can  dig  with  our 
spanners.  I  like  stones.  They're  so  frightfully  old,  and  I'd 
like  to  think,  if  I  was  ever  a  long  way  from  here,  of  my 
stone  and  the  harebells  looking  at  it — every  year  new  hare- 
bells and  the  same  old  stone." 


PAX 247 

"Do  you  know  what  I  think  you  are?"  inquired  Chator 
solemnly.     "I  think  you're  a  mystic." 

"I  never  can  understand  what  a  mystic  was,"  said 
Michael. 

"Nobody  can,"  said  Chator  encouragingly.  "But  lots 
of  them  were  made  saints  all  the  same.  I  don't  think  you 
ever  will  be,  because  you  do  put  forward  the  most  awfully 
dangerous  doctrines.  I  do  think  you  ought  to  be  careful, 
about  that.     I  do  really." 

Chator  was  spluttering  under  the  embarrassment  of  his 
own  eloquence,  and  Michael,  delicately  amused,  looked  at 
him  with  a  quizzical  smile.  Chator  was  older  than  Michael, 
and  by  reason  of  the  apoplectic  earnestness  of  his  appearance 
and  manner,  and  the  natural  goodness  of  him  so  sincerely, 
if  awkwardly,  expressed,  he  had  a  certain  influence  which 
Michael  admitted  to  himself,  however  much  in  the  public 
eye  he  might  affect  to  patronize  Chator  from  his  own  intel- 
lectual eminence.  Along  the  road  of  speculation,  however, 
Michael  would  not  allow  Chator's  right  to  curb  him,  and 
he  took  a  wilful  pleasure  in  galloping  ahead  over  the  wildest, 
loftiest  paths.  To  shock  old  Chator  was  Michael's  delight; 
and  he  never  failed  to  do  so. 

"You  see,"  Chator  spluttered,  "it's  not  so  much  what 
you  say  now;  nobody  would  pay  any  attention  to  you, 
and  I  know  you  don't  mean  half  what  you  say;  but  later 
on  you'll  begin  to  believe  in  all  these  heretical  ideas  of 
your  own.  You'll  end  up  by  being  an  Agnostic.  Oh,  yes 
you  will,"  he  raged  with  torrential  prophecies,  as  Michael 
leaned  over  the  seat  of  his  bicycle  laughing  consumedly. 
"You'll  go  on  and  on  wondering  this  and  that  and  im- 
proving the  doctrines  of  the  Church  until  you  improve 
them  right  away." 

"You  are  a  funny  old  ass.  You  really  are,"  gurgled 
Michael.  "And  what's  so  funny  to  me  is  that  just  when 
I  had  a  moment  of  really  believing,  you  dash  in  with  your 


248  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

warnings  and  nearly  spoil  it  all.  By  Jove,  did  you  see  that 
Pale  Clouded  Yellow?"  he  shouted  suddenly.  "By  Jove, 
I  haven't  seen  one  in  England  for  an  awful  long  time.  I 
think  I'll  begin  collecting  butterflies  again." 

Disputes  of  doctrine  were  flung  to  the  wind  that  sang 
in  their  ears  as  they  mounted  their  bicycles  and  coasted 
swiftly  from  the  bare  green  summits  of  the  downs  into 
a  deep  lane  overshadowed  by  oak-trees.  Soon  they  came 
to  the  Abbey  gates,  or  rather  to  the  place  where  the  Abbey 
gates  would  one  day  rise  in  Gothic  commemoration  of 
the  slow  subscriptions  of  the  faithful.  At  present  the 
entrance  was  only  marked  by  a  stony  road  disappearing 
abruptly  at  the  behest  of  a  painted  finger-post  into  verdur- 
ous solitudes.  After  wheeling  their  bicycles  for  about  a 
quarter  of  a  winding  mile,  the  two  boys  came  to  a  large 
open  spp.ce  in  the  wood  and  beheld  Clere  Abbey,  a  long 
low  wooden  building  set  as  piously  near  to  the  overgrown 
foundations  of  old  Clere  Abbey  as  was  possible, 

"What  a  rotten  shame,"  cried  Michael,  "that  they  can't 
build  a  decent  Abbey.  Never  mind,  I  think  it's  going  to 
be  rather  good  sport  here." 

They  walked  up  to  the  door  that  seemed  too  massive 
for  the  flimsy  pile  to  which  it  gave  entrance,  and  pealed 
the  large  bell  that  hung  by  the  side.  Michael  was  pleased 
to  observe  a  grille  through  which  peered  the  eyes  of  the 
monastic  porter  inquisitive  of  the  wayfarers.  Then  a  bolt 
shot  back;  the  door  opened,  and  Michael  and  Chator  en- 
tered the  religious  house. 

*Tm  Brother  Ambrose,"  said  the  porter,  a  stubby  man 
with  a  flat  pock-marked  face  whose  ugliness  was  redeemed 
by  an  expression  of  wonderful  innocence.  "Dom  Cuthbert 
is  expecting  you  in  the  Abbot's  Parlor." 

Michael  and  Chator  followed  Brother  Ambrose,  through 
a  pleasant  book-lined  hall,  into  the  paternal  haunt  where 
the  Lord  Abbot  of  Clere  sat  writing  at  a  roll-top  desk. 


PAX 249 

He  rose  to  greet  the  boys,  who  with  reverence  perceived  him 
to  be  a  tall  dark  angular  man  with  glowing  eyes  that  seemed 
very  deeply  set  on  either  side  of  his  great  hooked  nose. 
He  could  scarcely  have  been  over  thirty-five  years  of  age, 
but  he  moved  with  a  languid  awkwardness  that  made  him 
seem  older.  His  voice  was  very  remote  and  melodious  as 
he  welcomed  them.  Michael  looked  anxiously  at  Chator  to 
see  if  he  followed  any  precise  ritual  of  salutation,  but 
Dom  Cuthbert  solved  the  problem  by  shaking  hands  at 
once  and  motioning  them  to  wicker  chairs  beside  the  empty 
hearth. 

"Pleasant  ride?"  inquired  Dom  Cuthbert. 

"Awfully  decent,"  said  Michael.  "We  heard  the  Angelus 
a  long  way  off." 

"A  lovely  bell,"  murmured  Dom  Cuthbert.  "Tubular. 
It  was  given  to  us  by  the  Duke  of  Birmingham.  Come 
along,  I'll  show  you  the  Abbey,  if  you're  not  too  tired." 

"Rather  not,"  Michael  and  Chator  declared. 

The  Abbot  led  the  way  into  the  book-lined  hall. 

"This  is  the  library.  You  can  read  here  as  much  as  you 
like.  The  brethren  sit  here  at  recreation-time.  This  is  the 
refectory,"  he  went  on,  with  distant  chimings  in  his  tone. 

The  two  boys  gazed  respectfully  at  the  bare  trestle  table 
and  the  raised  reading  desk  and  the  picture  of  St.  Benedict. 

"Of  course  we  haven't  much  room  yet,"  Dom  Cuthbert 
continued.  "In  fact  we  have  very  little.  People  are  very 
suspicious  of  monkery." 

He  smiled  tolerantly,  and  his  voice  faded  almost  out  of 
the  refectory,  as  if  it  would  soothe  the  harsh  criticism  of 
the  world,  hence  infinitely  remote. 

"But  one  day" — from  worldly  adventure  his  voice  came 
back  renewed  with  hope — "one  day,  when  we  have  some 
money,  we  shall  build  a  real  Abbey." 

"This    is    awfully    ripping    though,    isn't    it?"    observed 

Michael  with  sympathetic  encouragement. 
17 


250  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

**I  daresay  the  founder  of  the  Order  was  never  so  well 
housed,"  agreed  the  Abbot. 

Dom  Cuthbert  led  them  to  the  guest-chamber,  from 
which  opened  three  diminutive  bedrooms. 

"Your  cells,"  the  monk  said.  "But  of  course  you'll  feed 
in  here,"  he  added,  indicating  the  small  bare  room  in  which 
they  stood  with  so  wide  a  sweep  of  his  ample  sleeve  that 
the  matchboarded  ceiling  soared  into  vast  Gothic  twilights 
and  the  walls  were  of  stone.  Michael  was  vaguely  re- 
minded of  Mr.  Prout  and  his  inadequate  oratory. 

"The  guest-brother  is  Dom  Gilbert,"  continued  the 
Abbot.     "Come  and  see  the  cloisters." 

They  passed  from  the  guest-room  behind  the  main  build- 
ing and  saw  that  another  building  formed  there  the  second 
side  of  a  quadrangle.  The  other  two  sides  were  still  open 
to  the  hazel  coppice  that  here  encroached  upon  the  Abbey. 
However,  there  w^ere  traceable  the  foundations  of  new  build- 
ing to  complete  the  quadrangle,  and  a  mass  of  crimson 
hollyhocks  were  shining  with  rubied  chalices  in  the  quiet 
sunlight.  For  all  its  incompleteness,  this  was  a  strangely 
beautiful  corner  of  the  green  world. 

"Are  these  the  cloisters?"  Michael  asked. 

"One  day,  one  day,"  replied  Dom  Cuthbert.  "A  little 
rough  at  present,  but  before  I  die  I'm  sure  there  will  be  a 
mighty  edifice  in  this  wood  to  the  glory  of  God  and  His 
saints." 

"I'd  like  it  best  that  way,"  said  Michael.  "Not  all  at 
once." 

He  felt  an  imaginative  companionship  with  the  aspirations 
of  the  Abbot. 

"Now  we'll  visit  the  Chapel,"  said  Dom  Cuthbert.  "We 
built  the  Chapel  with  our  own  hands  of  mud  and  stone 
and  laths.  You'll  like  the  Chapel.  Sometimes  I  feel  quite 
sorry  to  think  of  leaving  it  for  the  great  Abbey  Church 
we  shall  one  day  build  with  the  hands  of  workmen." 


PAX  251 

The  Chapel  was  reached  by  a  short  cloister  of  primitive 
construction,  and  it  was  the  simplest,  purest  place  of  worship 
that  Michael  had  ever  seen.  It  seemed  to  have  gathered 
beneath  its  small  roof  the  whole  of  peace.  On  one  side  the 
hazel  bushes  grew  so  close  that  the  windows  opened  on  to 
the  mysterious  green  heart  of  life.  Two  curtains  worked 
with  golden  blazonries  divided  the  choir  from  the  congre- 
gation. 

**This  is  where  you'll  sit,"  said  Dom  Cuthbert,  pointing 
to  two  kneeling-chairs  on  either  side  of  the  opening  into 
the  choir.  "Perhaps  you'll  say  a  prayer  now  for  the  Order. 
The  prayers  of  children  travel  very  swiftly  to  God." 

Dom  Cuthbert  passed  to  the  Abbot's  stall  to  kneel,  while 
Michael  and  Chator  knelt  on  the  chairs.  When  they  had 
prayed  for  a  while,  the  Abbot  took  them  into  the  sacristy 
and  showed  them  the  vestments  and  the  sacred  vessels  of 
the  altar,  and  from  the  sacristy  door  they  passed  into  a 
straight  woodland  way. 

"The  Abbot's  walk,"  said  Dom  Cuthbert,  with  a  beautiful 
smile.  "The  brethren  cut  this  wonderful  path  during  their 
hours  of  recreation.  I  cannot  envy  any  cloisters  with  this 
to  walk  in.  How  soft  is  the  moss  beneath  our  feet,  and 
in  Spring  how  loudly  the  birds  sing  here.  The  leaves 
come  very  early,  too,  and  linger  very  late.  It  is  a  wonderful 
path.  Now  I  must  go  and  work.  I  have  a  lot  of  letters 
to  write.  Explore  the  woods  and  the  downs  and  enjoy 
yourselves.  You'll  find  the  rules  that  the  guests  must  ob- 
serve pinned  to  the  wall  of  the  guest-room.  Enjoy  your- 
selves and  be  content." 

The  tall  figure  of  the  monk  with  its  languid  awkwardness 
of  gait  disappeared  from  the  Abbot's  walk,  and  the  two 
boys,    arm-in-arm,   wandered   off   in   the  opposite   direction. 

"Everything  was  absolutely  correct,"  burbled  Chator. 
"Oh,  yes,  absolutely.  Not  at  all  Anglican.  Perfectly 
correct.    I'm  glad.    I'm  really  very  glad.    I  was  a  bit  afraid 


252  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

at  first  ft  might  be  Anglican.  But  it's  not — oh,  no, 
not  at  all." 

In  the  guest-chamber  they  read  the  rules  for  guests,  and 
discovered  to  their  mortification  that  they  were  not  ex- 
pected to  be  present  at  Matins  and  Lauds. 

"I  was  looking  forward  to  getting  up  at  two  o'clock," 
said  Michael.  "Perhaps  Dom  Cuthbert  will  let  us  some- 
times. It's  really  much  easier  to  get  up  at  two  o'clock  than 
five.     Mass  is  at  half-past  five,  and  we  must  go  to  that." 

Dom  Gilbert,  the  guest-brother,  came  in  with  plates  of 
bread  and  cheese,  while  the  boys  were  reading  the  rules, 
and  they  questioned  him  about  going  to  Matins.  He 
laughed  and  said  they  would  have  as  much  church  as  they 
wished  without  being  quite  such  strict  Benedictines  as 
that.  Michael  was  not  sure  whether  he  liked  Dom  Gilbert 
— he  was  such  a  very  practical  monk. 

"If  you  go  to  Mass  and  Vespers  and  Compline  every  day," 
said  Dom  Gilbert,  "you'll  do  very  well.  And  please  be 
punctual  for  your  meals." 

Michael  and  Chator  looked  injured. 

"Breakfast  after  Mass.  Bread  and  cheese  at  twelve. 
Cup  of  tea  at  five,  if  you're  in.     Supper  at  eight." 

Dom  Gilbert  left  them  abruptly  to  eat  their  bread  and 
cheese  alone. 

"He's  rather  a  surly  chap,"  grumbled  Michael.  "He 
doesn't  seem  to  me  the  right  one  to  have  chosen  for  guest- 
brother  at  all.  I  had  a  lot  I  wanted  to  ask  him.  For  one 
thing  I  don't  know  where  the  lav  is.  I  think  he's  a  rotten 
guest-brother." 

The  afternoon  passed  in  a  walk  along  the  wide  ridge  of 
the  downs  through  the  amber  of  this  fine  summer  day. 
Several  hares  were  seen  and  a  kestrel,  while  Chator  disposed 
very  volubly  of  the  claims  of  several  Anglican  clergymen  to 
Catholicism.  After  tea  in  the  hour  of  recreation  they  met 
the    other    monks,    Dom    Gregory    the    organist,    Brother 


PAX 253 

George  and   Brother  William.     It  was  not   a  very  large 
monastery. 

Chator  found  the  Vespers  somewhat  trying  to  his 
curiosity,  because  owing  to  the  interposition  of  the  curtain 
he  was  unable  to  criticize  the  behavior  of  the  monks  in 
choir.  This  made  him  very  fidgety,  and  rather  destroyed 
Michael's  sense  of  peace.  However,  Chator  restrained 
his  ritualistic  ardor  very  well  at  Compline,  w^hich  in  the 
dimness  of  the  starlit  night  was  a  magical  experience,  as 
one  by  one  with  raised  cowls  the  monks  entered  in  black 
procession  and  silence  absolute.  Michael,  where  he  knelt 
in  the  ante-chapel,  was  profoundly  moved  by  the  intimate 
responses  and  the  severe  Compline  hymn.  He  liked,  too, 
the  swift  departure  to  bed  without  chattering  good-nights 
to  spoil  the  solemnity  of  the  last  Office.  Even  Chator  kept 
all  conversation  for  the  morning,  and  Michael  felt  he  had 
never  lain  down  upon  a  couch  so  truly  sanctified,  nor  ever 
risen  from  one  so  pure  as  when  Dom  Gilbert  knocked  with 
a  hammer  on  the  door  and,  standing  dark  against  the  milk- 
white  dawn,  murmured,  'Tax  vobiscum." 


CHAPTER   VII 
CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS 

IN  the  first  fortnight  of  their  stay  at  Clere  Abbas 
Michael  and  Chator  lived  like  vagabond  hermits 
rejoicing  in  the  freedom  of  fine  weather.  Mostly 
they  went  for  long  walks  over  the  downs  and  through 
the  woodlands  of  the  southern  slope.  To  the  monks  at 
recreation-time  they  would  recount  their  adventures  with 
gamekeepers  and  contumacious  farmers,  their  discoveries 
of  flowers  and  birds  and  butterflies,  their  entertainment  at 
remote  cottage  homes  and  the  hospitalities  of  gipsy  camps. 
To  be  sure  they  would  often  indulge  in  theological  dis- 
cussions, and  sometimes,  when  caught  by  the  azure-footed 
dusk  in  unfamiliar  lanes,  they  would  chant  plainsong  to 
the  confusion  of  whatever  ghostly  pursuers,  whether  Dryads 
or  mediaeval  fiends  or  early  Victorian  murderers,  that 
seemed  to  dog  their  footsteps.  So  much  nowadays  did 
the  unseen  world  mingle  with  the  ordinary  delights  of 
youth. 

"Funny  thing,"  said  Michael  to  Chator.  "When  I  was 
a  kid  I  used  to  be  frightened  at  night — always.  Then  for 
a  long  time  I  wasn't  frightened  at  all,  and  now  again  I 
have  a  queer  feeling  just  after  sunset,  a  sort  of  curious 
dampness  inside  me.     Do  you  ever  have  it?" 

"I  only  have  it  when  you  start  me  off,"  said  Chator. 
"But  it  goes  when  we  sing  'Te  lucis  ante  terminum'  or 
chant  the  Nicene  Creed  or  anything  holy." 

254 


CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS  255 

"Yes,  it  does  with  me,"  Michael  agreed  dubiously.  "But, 
if  I  drive  it  away,  it  comes  back  in  the  middle  of  the 
night.  I  have  all  sorts  of  queer  feelings.  Sometimes  I  feel 
as  if  there  wasn't  any  me  at  all,  and  I'm  surprised  to  see  a 
letter  come  addressed  to  me.  But  when  I  see  a  letter 
I've  written,  I'm  still  more  surprised.  Do  you  have  that 
feeling?  Then  often  I  feel  as  if  all  we  were  doing  or  saying 
at  a  certain  moment  had  been  done  or  said  before.  Then 
at  other  times  I  have  to  hold  onto  a  tree  or  hurt  myself 
with  something  just  to  prove  I'm  there.  And  then  some- 
times I  think  nothing  is  impossible  for  me.  I  feel  abso- 
lutely great,  as  if  I  were  Shakespeare.  Do  you  ever  have 
that  feeling?" 

But  Chator  was  either  not  sufficiently  introspective  so  to 
resolve  his  moods,  or  else  he  was  too  simply  set  on  his  own 
naive  religion  for  his  personality  to  plunge  haphazard  into 
such  spiritual  currents  uncharted. 

The  pleasantest  time  of  the  monastic  week  was  Sunday 
afternoon,  when  Dom  Cuthbert,  very  lank  and  pontifical, 
would  lean  back  in  the  deepest  wicker  chair  of  the  library 
to  listen  to  various  Thoughts  culled  by  the  brethren  from 
their  week's  reading.  The  Thought  he  adjudged  best  was 
with  a  diamond  pencil  immortalized  upon  a  window-pane, 
and  the  lucky  discoverer  derived  as  much  satisfaction  from 
the  verdict  as  was  compatible  with  Benedictine  humility. 
Dom  Cuthbert  allowed  Michael  and  Chator  to  share  in 
these  occasions,  and  he  evidently  enjoyed  the  variety  of 
choice  which  displayed  so  nicely  the  character  of  his  flock. 

One  afternoon  Michael  chose  for  his  excerpt  Don 
Quixote's  exclamation,  "How  these  enchanters  hate  me,' 
Sancho,"  with  Sancho's  reply,  "O  dismal  and  ill-minded 
enchanters." 

The  brethren  laughed  very  loudly  at  this,  for  though 
they  were  English  monks,  and  might  have  been  considered 
eccentric  by  the   Saxon  world,   their  minds   really  ran  on 


256  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

lines  of  sophisticated  piety  over  platitudinous  sleepers  of 
thought.  Michael  blushed  defiantly,  and  looked  at  Dom 
Cuthbert  for  comprehension. 

*'Hark  at  the  idealist  complaint  of  disillusionment  by  the 
Prince  of  Darkness,"  said  Dom  Cuthbert,  smiling. 

"It's  not  a  complaint,"  Michael  contradicted.  "It's  just 
a  remark.  That's  why  I  chose  it.  Besides,  it  gives  me  a 
satisfied  feeling.     Words  often  make  me  feel  hungry." 

The  monks  interrupted  him  with  more  laughter,  and 
Michael,  furiously  self-conscious,  left  the  library  and  went 
to  sit  alone  in  the  stillest  part  of  the  hazel  coppice. 

But  when  he  came  back  in  the  silent  minutes  before 
Vespers  he  read  his  sentence  on  the  window-pane,  and 
blinked  half-tearfully  at  the  westering  sun.  He  never  had 
another  Thought  enshrined,  because  he  was  forever  after 
this  trying  to  find  sentences  that  would  annoy  Dom  Gilbert, 
whom  he  suspected  of  leading  the  laughter.  Visitors  began 
to  come  to  the  Abbey  now — and  the  two  boys  were  much 
interested  in  the  people  who  flitted  past  almost  from  day 
to  day.  Among  them  was  Mr.  Prout  who  kept  up  a  duet 
of  volubility  with  Chator  from  morning  to  night  for 
nearly  a  week,  at  the  end  of  which  he  returned  to  his 
Bournemouth  bank.  These  discussions  amused  Michael 
most  when  he  was  able  to  break  the  rhythm  of  the  battle- 
dores by  knocking  down  whatever  liturgical  or  theological 
shuttlecock  was  being  used.  He  would  put  forward  the 
most  outrageous  heresy  as  his  own  firm  conviction,  and 
scandalize  and  even  alarm  poor  Mr.  Prout,  w^ho  did  not 
at  all  relish  dogmatic  follow-my-leader  and  prayed  for 
Michael's  reckless  soul  almost  as  fervidly  as  for  the  con- 
fusion of  the  timid  and  malignant  who  annually  objected 
to  the  forthcoming  feast  of  the  Assumption  at  St.  Bar- 
tholomew's. Mr.  Prout,  however,  was  only  one  of  a  series 
of  ritualistic  young  men  who  prattled  continually  of  vest- 
ments   and    ceremonies    and    ornaments,     until     Michael 


CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS  257 

began  to  resent  their  gossip  and  withdraw  from  their  society 
into  the  woods,  there  to  dream,  staring  up  at  the  green  and 
blue  arch  above  him,  of  the  past  here  in  wind-stirred  soli- 
tude so  much  the  more  real.  Michael  was  a  Catholic  be- 
cause Catholicism  assured  him  of  continuity  and  shrouded 
him  with  a  sensuous  austerity;  but  in  these  hours  of  revolt 
he  found  himself  wishing  for  the  old  days  with  Alan.  He 
was  fond  enough  of  Chator,  but  to  Chator  everything  was 
so  easy,  and,  when  one  day  a  letter  arrived  to  call  him  back 
to  his  family  earlier  than  he  expected,  Michael  was  glad. 
The  waning  summer  was  stimulating  his  imagination  with 
warm  noons  and  gusty  twilights;  Chator's  gossip  broke  the 
spell. 

Michael  went  for  solitary  walks  on  the  downs,  where  he 
loved  to  lie  in  hollows  and  watch  the  grasses  fantastically 
large  against  the  sky,  and  the  bulky  clouds  with  their  slow, 
bewitching  motion.  He  never  went  to  visit  sentimentally 
the  spot  where  stone  and  harebell  commemorated  his  brief 
experience  of  faith's  profundity,  for  he  dreaded  lest  indiffer- 
ence should  rob  him  of  a  perfect  conception.  He  knew 
very  well  even  already  the  dangerous  chill  familiarity  of 
repetition.  Those  cloud-enchanted  days  of  late  summer 
made  him  listlessly  aware  of  fleeting  impulses,  and  simul- 
taneously dignified  with  incommunicable  richness  the  pas- 
sivity and  even  emptiness  of  his  condition.  On  the  wide 
spaces  of  the  downs  he  wandered  luxuriously  irresolute; 
his  mind,  when  for  a  moment  it  goaded  itself  into  an  effort 
of  concentration,  faltered  immediately,  so  that  dead  chival- 
ries, gleaming  down  below  in  the  rainy  dusk  of  the  valleys, 
suffered  in  the  very  instant  of  perception  a  transmutation 
into  lamplit  streets;  and  the  wind's  dull  August  booming 
made  embattled  drums  and  fanfares  romantic  no  more 
than  music  heard  in  London  on  the  way  home  from  school. 
Everything  came  to  seem  impossible  and  intangible,  Michael 
could  not  conceive  that  he  ever  was  or  ever  would  be  in 


258  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

a  class-room  again,  and  almost  immediately  afterwards 
he  would  w^onder  whether  he  ever  had  been  or  ever  would 
be  anywhere  else.  He  began  to  imagine  himself  grown  up, 
but  this  w^as  a  nightmare  thought,  because  he  would  either 
realize  himself  decrepit  with  his  own  young  mind  or  out- 
wardly the  same  as  he  was  now  with  a  mind  hideously 
distorted  by  knowledge  and  sin.  He  could  never  achieve 
a  consistent  realization  that  would  give  him  definite  am- 
bitions. He  longed  to  make  up  his  mind  to  aim  at  some 
profession,  and  the  more  he  longed  the  more  hopeless  did 
it  seem  to  try  to  fit  any  existing  profession  with  the  de- 
pressing idea  of  himself  grown  up.  Then  he  would  relax 
his  whole  being  and  let  himself  be  once  more  bewitched 
into  passivity  by  clouds  and  waving  grasses. 

Upon  this  mental  state  of  Michael  intruded  one  day  a 
visitor  to  the  Abbey.  A  young  man  with  spectacles  and 
a  pear-shaped  face,  who  wore  gray  flannel  shirts  that 
depressed  Michael  unendurably,  made  a  determined  effort 
to  gain  his  confidence.  The  more  shy  that  Michael 
became,  the  more  earnestly  did  this  young  man  press  him 
with  intimate  questions  about  his  physical  well-being.  For 
Michael  it  was  a  strange  and  odiously  embarrassing  ex- 
perience. The  young  man,  whose  name  was  Garrod, 
spoke  of  his  home  in  Hornsey  and  invited  Michael  to  stay 
with  him.  Michael  shuddered  at  the  idea  of  staying  in  a 
strange  suburb ;  strange  suburbs  had  always  seemed  to  him 
desolate,  abominable  and  insecure.  He  always  visualized 
a  draughty  and  ill-lighted  railway  platform,  a  rickety  and 
gloomy  omnibus,  countless  Nonconformist  chapels  and  in- 
frequent policemen.  Garrod  spoke  of  his  work  on  Sundays 
at  a  church  that  was  daily  gaining  adherents,  of  a  dissolute 
elder  brother  and  an  Agnostic  father.  Michael  could  have 
cried  aloud  his  unwillingness  to  visit  Garrod.  But  the 
young  man  was  persistent;  the  young  man  was  sure  that 
Michael,    from   ignorance,   was   leading   an   unhealthy   life. 


CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS  259 

Garrod  spoke  of  ignorance  with  ferocity;  he  trampled  on 
it  with  polytechnical  knowledge,  and  pelted  it  with 
all  sorts  of  little  books  that  afflicted  Michael  with  nausea. 
Michael  loathed  Garrod,  and  resented  his  persistent  in- 
structions, his  offers  to  solve  lingering  physical  perplexities. 
For  Michael,  Garrod  defiled  the  country  by  his  cockney 
complacency,  his  attacks  upon  public  schools,  his  unpleasant 
interrogations.  Michael  longed  for  Alan  that  together 
they  might  rag  this  worm  who  wriggled  so  obscenely  into 
the  secret  places  of  a  boy's  mind. 

"Science  is  all  the  go  nowadays,"  said  Garrod.  "And 
Science  is  what  we  want.  Science  and  Religion.  Some 
think  they  don't  go  together.  Don't  they?  I  think  the^ 
do    then." 

"I  hate  science,"  said  Michael.  "Except  for  doctors, 
of  course — I  suppose  they've  got  to  have  it,"  he  added 
grudgingly.  "At  St.  James'  the  Modern  fellows  are  nearly 
always  bounders." 

"But  don't  you  want  to  know  what  your  body's  made 
of?"   demanded  Garrod. 

"I  don't  want  to  be  told.  I  know  quite  enough  for 
myself." 

"Well,  would  you  like  to  read " 

"No,  I  don't  want  to  read  anything,"  interrupted 
Michael. 

"But  have  you  read " 

"The  only  books  I  like,"  expostulated  Michael,  "are  the 
books  I  find  for  myself." 

"But  you  aren't  properly  educated." 

"I'm  at  a  public  school,"  said  Michael  proudly. 

"Yes,  and  public  schools  have  got  to  go  very  soon." 

"Who  says  so?"  demanded  Michael  fiercely. 

"We  say  so.    The  people." 

"The  people?"  echoed  Michael.     "What  people?     Why, 


26o  YOUTH'S '  ENCOUNTER 

if  public  schools  were  done  away  with  we  shouldn't  have 
any  gentlemen," 

"You're  getting  ofiE  of  the  point,"  said  Garrod.  "You 
don't  understand  what  I'm  driving  at.  You're  a  fellow 
I  took  a  fancy  to  right  off,  as  you  might  say.  I  don't  want 
to  see  you  ruin  your  health  for  the  want  of  the  right  word 
at  the  right  moment.     Oh,  yes,  I  know." 

"Look  here,"  said  Michael  bluntly,  "I  don't  want  to  be 
rude,  but  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  this  any  more.  It 
makes  me  feel  beastly." 

"False  modesty  is  the  worst  thing  we've  got  to  fight 
against,"  declared  Garrod. 

So  the  argument  continued,  w^hile  all  the  time  the  zealous 
young  man  would  fling  darts  of  information  that,  however 
much  Michael  was  unwilling  to  receive  them,  generally 
stuck  fast.  Michael  was  relieved  when  Garrod  passed  on 
his  way,  and  he  vowed  to  himself  never  to  run  the  risk 
of  meeting  him  again. 

The  visit  of  Garrod  opened  for  Michael  a  door  to  uneasy 
speculation.  At  his  private  school  he  had  known  the 
hostility  of  "cads,"  and  later  on  he  had  been  aware  of  the 
existence  of  "bounders";  the  cads  were  always  easily 
defeated  by  force  of  arms,  but  this  sudden  attack  upon  his 
intimacy  by  a  bounder  was  disquieting  and  difficult  to 
deal  with.  He  resented  Garrod's  iconoclasm,  resented  it 
furiously  in  retrospect,  wishing  that  he  had  parried  more 
icily  his  impudent  thrusts;  and  he  could  almost  have  re- 
joiced in  Garrod's  reappearance  that  with  disdain  he 
might  have  wounded  the  fellow  incurably.  Yet  he  had  a 
feeling  that  Garrod  might  have  turned  out  proof  against 
the  worst  weapons  he  knew  how  to  use,  and  the  memory 
of  the  "blighter's"  self-confidence  was  demoralizing  to 
Michael's  conception  of  superiority.  The  vision  of  a 
world  populated  by  hostile  Garrods  rose  up,  and  some  of 
the  simplicity  of  life  vanished  irredeemably,  so  that  Michael 


CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS  261 

took  refuge  in  dreams  of  his  own  fashioning,  where  in  a 
feudal  world  the  dreamer  rode  at  the  head  of  mankind. 
Lying  awake  in  the  intense  blackness  of  his  cell,  Michael 
troubled  himself  once  more  with  his  identity,  wishing 
that  he  knew  more  about  himself  and  his  father,  wishing 
that  his  mother  were  not  growing  more  remote  every  day, 
wondering  whether  Stella  over  in  Germany  was  encountering 
Garrods  and  praying  hard  with  a  sense  of  impotency  in  the 
darkness.  He  tried  to  make  up  his  mind  to  consult  Dom 
Cuthbert,  but  the  lank,  awkward  monk,  fond  though  he 
was  of  him,  seemed  unapproachable  by  daylight,  and  the 
idea  of  consulting  him,  still  more  of  confessing  to  him, 
never  crystallized. 

These  were  still  days  bedewed  with  the  approach  of 
Autumn;  milkwhite  at  morn  and  at  noon  breathless  with 
a  silver  intensity  that  yearned  upward  against  an  azure 
too  ethereal,  they  floated  sadly  into  night  with  humid, 
intangible  draperies  of  mist.  These  were  days  that  forbade 
Michael  to  walk  afield,  and  that  with  haunting,  autumnal 
birdsong  held  him  in  a  trance.  He  would  find  himself  at 
the  day's  end  conscious  of  nothing  but  a  remembrance  of 
new  stubble  trodden  mechanically  with  languors  attendant, 
and  it  was  only  by  a  great  effort  that  he  brought  himself  to 
converse  with  the  monks  working  among  the  harvest  or  for 
the  Nativity  of  the  Blessed  Virgin  to  pick  heavy  white 
chrysanthemums  from  the  stony  garden  of  the  Abbey. 

Michael  was  the  only  guest  staying  in  the  Abbey  on  the 
vigil,  and  he  sat  almost  in  the  entrance  of  the  choir  between 
the  drawn  curtains,  not  very  much  unlike  the  devout  figure 
of  some  youthful  donor  in  an  old  Italian  picture,  somber 
against  the  blazing  Vespers  beyond.  Michael  was  always 
hoping  for  a  direct  manifestation  from  above  to  reward 
the  effort  of  faith,  although  he  continually  reproved  himself 
for  this  desire  and  flouted  his  weakness.  He  used  to  gaze 
into    the   candles    until    they    actually    did    seem    to    burn 


262  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 


with  angelic  eyes  that  made  his  heart  leap  in  expectation 
of  the  sign  awaited;  but  soon  fancy  would  betray  him,  and 
they  would  become  candles  again,  merely  flickering. 

On  this  September  dusk  there  were  crimson  shadows  of 
sunset  deepening  to  purple  in  the  corners  of  the  chapel; 
the  candles  were  very  bright;  the  brethren  in  the  stalls 
sang  with  austere  fervor;  the  figure  of  Dom  Cuthbert 
veiled  from  awkwardness  by  the  heavy  white  cope  moved 
before  the  altar  during  the  censing  of  the  Magnificat  with 
a  majesty  that  filled  the  small  choir;  the  thurible  tinkled 
its  perfumed  harmonies;  and  above  the  contentment  of  the 
ensuing  hush  blackbirds  were  heard  in  the  garden  or  seen 
slipping  to  and  fro  like  shadows  across  the  windows. 

Michael  at  this  moment  realized  that  there  was  a  seventh 
monk  in  the  choir,  and  wondered  vaguely  how  he  had  failed 
to  notice  this  newcomer  before.  Immediately  after  being 
made  aware  of  his  presence  he  caught  the  stranger's  eye, 
and  blushed  so  deeply  that  to  cover  his  confusion  he  turned 
over  the  pages  of  a  psalter.  Curiosity  made  him  look  up 
again,  but  the  new  monk  was  devoutly  wrapped  in  con- 
templation, nor  did  Michael  catch  his  eye  again  during  the 
Office.  At  supper  he  inquired  about  the  newcomer  of  Dom 
Gilbert,  who  reproved  him  for  inquisitiveness,  but  told  him 
he  was  called  Brother  Aloysius.  Again  at  Compline  Michael 
caught  his  glance,  and  for  a  long  time  that  night  in  the 
darkness  he  saw  the  eyes  of  Brother  Aloysius  gleaming 
very  blue. 

On  the  next  day  Michael,  wandering  by  the  edge  of  the 
hazel  coppice,  came  upon  Brother  Aloysius  with  deep-stained 
mouth  and  hands  gathering  blackberries. 

"Who  are  you?"  asked  the  monk.  "You  gave  me  a 
very  funny  look  at  Vespers." 

Michael  thought  this  was  an  extremely  unusual  way  for 
a  monk,  even  a  new  monk,  to  speak,  and  hesitated  a  moment 
before  he  explained  who  he  was. 


CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS  263 

"I  suppose  you  can  help  me  pick  blackberries.  I  suppose 
that  isn't  against  the  rules." 

"I  often  help  the  brothers,"  said  Michael  simply.  "But 
I  don't  much  care  for  picking  blackberries.  Still,  I  don't 
mind  helping  you." 

Michael  had  an  impulse  to  leave  Brother  Aloysius,  but 
his  self-consciousness  prevented  him  from  acting  on  it,  and 
he  kept  the  picker  company  in  silence  v^^hile  the  blackberries 
dropped  lusciously  into  the  basket. 

"Feel  my  hand,"  said  Brother  Aloysius  suddenly.  "It's 
as  hot  as  hell." 

This  time  Michael  stared  in  frank  astonishment. 

"Well,  you  needn't  look  so  frightened,"  said  the  monk. 
"You  don't  look  so  very  good  yourself." 

"Well,  of  course  I'm  not  good,"  said  Michael.  "Only 
I  think  it's  funny  for  a  monk  to  sw^ear.  You  don't  mind 
my  saying  so,  do  you?" 

"I  don't  mind.  I  don't  mind  anything,"  said  Brother 
Aloysius. 

Tension  succeeded  this  statement,  a  tension  that  Michael 
longed  to  break;  but  he  could  do  no  more  than  continue  to 
pick  the  blackberries. 

"I  suppose  you  v^^onder  why  I'm  a  monk?"  demanded 
Brother  Aloysius. 

Michael  looked  at  his  questioner's  pale  face,  at  the  un- 
comfortable ej-es  gleaming  blue,  at  the  full  stained  mouth 
and  the  long  feverish  hands  dyed  with  purple  juice. 

"Why  are  you?"  he  asked. 

"Well,  I  thought  I'd  try  if  anything  could  make  me  feel 
good,  and  then  you  looked  at  me  in  Chapel  and  set  me 
off  again." 

"I  set  you  oflf?"  stammered  Michael. 

"Yes,  you  with  your  big  girl's  eyes,  just  like  a  girl  I 
used  to  live  with.  Oh,  you  needn't  look  so  proper.  I 
expect  you've  often  thought  about  girls.     I   did   at  your 


264  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

age.  Three  months  with  girls,  three  months  with  priests. 
Girls  and  priests — that's  my  life.  When  I  was  tired  of 
women,  I  became  religious,  and  when  I  was  tired  of  Church, 
I  took  to  women.  It  was  a  priest  told  me  to  come  here  to 
see  if  this  would  cure  me,  and  now,  damn  you,  you  come 
into  Chapel  and  stare  and  set  me  thinking  of  the  Seven 
Sisters  Road  on  that  wet  night  I  saw  her  last.  That's 
where  she  lives,  and  you  look  exactly  like  her.  God !  you're 
the  image  of  her.  You  might  almost  be  her  ghost  incar- 
nate." 

Brother  Aloysius  caught  hold  of  Michael's  arm  and  spoke 
through  clenched  teeth.  In  Michael's  struggle  to  free  him- 
self the  basket  of  blackberries  was  upset,  and  they  trod  the 
spilt  fruit  into  the  grass.  Michael  broke  away  finally  and 
gasped  angrily: 

"Look  here,  I'm  not  going  to  stay  here.     You're  mad." 

He  ran  from  the  monk  into  the  depths  of  the  wood,  not 
stopping  until  he  reached  a  silent  glade.  Here  on  the  moss 
he  sat  panting,  horrified.  Yet,  when  he  came  to  compose 
the  sentences  in  which  he  should  tell  Dom  Cuthbert  of 
his  experience  with  the  new  monk,  he  found  himself  wishing 
that  he  had  stayed  to  hear  more.  He  actually  enjoyed  in 
retrospect  the  humiliation  of  the  man,  and  his  heart  beat 
with  the  excitement  of  hearing  more.  Slowly  he  turned 
to  seek  again  Brother  Aloysius. 

"You  may  as  well  tell  me  some  more,  now  you've  begun," 
said  Michael. 

For  three  or  four  days  Michael  was  always  in  the  company 
of  Brother  Aloysius,  plying  him  with  questions  that  sounded 
abominable  to  himself,  when  he  remembered  with  what 
indignation  he  had  rejected  Garrod's  offer  of  knowledge. 
Brother  Aloysius  spared  no  blushes,  whether  of  fiery  shame 
or  furtive  desire,  and  piece  by  piece  Michael  learned  the 
fabric  of  vice.  He  was  informed  coldly  of  facts  whose 
existence  he  had  hitherto  put  down  to  his  own  most  solitary 


CLOVEN    HOOFMARKS  265 


and  most  intimate  imaginations.  Every  vague  evil  that 
came  w^ickedly  before  sleep  w^as  now^  made  real  w^ith  concrete 
examples;  the  vilest  ideas,  that  hitherto  he  had  considered 
peculiar  to  himself  and  perhaps  a  few  more  sadly  tempted 
dreamers  tossing  through  the  vulnerable  hours  of  the  night, 
w^ere  commonplace  to  Brother  Aloysius,  v^hose  soul  w^as 
twisted,  whose  mind  was  debased  to  such  an  extent  that 
he  could  boast  of  his  delight  in  making  the  very  priest 
writhe  and  wince  in  the  Confessional. 

Conversations  with  Brother  Aloysius  were  sufficiently 
thrilling  journeys,  and  Michael  was  always  ready  to  follow 
his  footsteps  as  one  might  follow  a  noctambulatory  cat. 
The  Seven  Sisters  Road  was  the  scene  of  most  of  his  ad- 
ventures, if  adventures  they  could  be  called,  these  dissolute 
pilgrimages.  Michael  came  to  know  this  street  as  one  comes 
to  know  the  street  of  a  familiar  dream.  He  walked  along  it 
in  lavender  sunrises  watching  the  crenelated  horizon  of 
housetops;  he  sauntered  through  it  slowly  on  dripping 
midnights,  and  on  foggy  November  afternoons  he  speculated 
upon  the  windows  with  their  aqueous  sheen  of  incandescent 
gas.  On  summer  dusks  he  pushed  his  way  through  the  fetid 
population  that  thronged  it,  smelling  the  odor  of  stale 
fruit  exposed  for  sale,  and  on  sad  gray  Sabbaths  he  saw  the 
ill-corseted  servant  girls  treading  down  the  heels  of  their 
ugly  boots,  and  plush-clad  children  who  continually  dropped 
Sunday-school  books  in  the  mud. 

And  not  only  was  Michael  cognizant  of  the  sordid  street's 
exterior.  He  heard  the  creak  of  bells  by  blistered  doors,  he 
tripped  over  mats  in  narrow  gloomy  passages  and  felt  his 
way  up  stale  rickety  stairs.  Michael  knew  many  rooms  in 
this  street  of  dreams,  but  they  were  all  much  alike  with 
their  muslin  and  patchouli,  their  aspidistras  and  yellowing 
photographs.  The  ribbed  pianos  tintinnabulated  harshly 
with  songs  cut  from  the  squalid  sheets  of  Sunday  papers; 
18 


266  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

in  unseen  basements  children  whined,  while  on  the  mantel- 
piece garish  vases  rattled  to  the  vibration  of  traffic. 

Michael  was  also  aware  of  the  emotional  crises  that  occur 
in  the  Seven  Sisters  Road,  from  the  muttered  curses  of  the 
old  street-walkers  with  their  crape  bonnets  cocked  awry 
and  their  draggled  musty  skirts  to  Brother  Aloysius  himself 
shaken  with  excess  of  sin  in  colloquy  w^ith  a  ghostly  voice 
upon  a  late  winter  dawn. 

*'A  ghost?"  he  echoed  incredulously. 

''It's  true.  I  heard  a  voice  telling  me  to  go  back.  And 
when  I  went  back,  there  she  was  sitting  in  the  armchair 
with  the  antimacassar  round  her  shoulders  because  it  was 
cold,  and  the  carving-knife  across  her  knees,  waiting  up  to 
do  for  the  fellow  that  was  keeping  her.  I  reckon  it  was 
God  sent  me  back  to  save  her." 

Even  Michael  in  his  vicious  mood  could  not  tolerate 
this  hysterical  blasphemy,  and  he  scoffed  at  the  supernatural 
explanation.  But  Brother  Aloysius  did  not  care  whether  he 
was  believed  or  not.  He  himself  was  sufficient  audience  to 
himself,  ready  to  applaud  and  condemn  w^ith  equal  exagger- 
ation of  feeling. 

After  a  week  of  self-revelation  Brother  Aloysius  suddenly 
had  spiritual  qualms  about  his  behavior,  and  announced  to 
Michael  that  he  must  go  to  Confession  and  free  himself 
from  the  oppressive  responsibility  of  his  sin.  Michael  did 
not  like  the  thought  of  Dom  Cuthbert  being  aware  of  the 
way  in  which  his  last  days  at  the  monastery  had  been  spent, 
and  hoped  that  Brother  Aloysius  would  confess  in  as  general 
a  manner  as  possible.  Yet  even  so  he  feared  that  the  per- 
spicacious Abbot  would  guess  the  partner  of  his  penitent, 
and,  notwithstanding  the  sacred  impersonality  of  the  Con- 
fessional, regard  Michael  with  an  involuntary  disgust. 
However,  the  confession,  with  all  its  attendant  pangs  of 
self-reproach,  passed  over,  and  Michael  was  unable  to 
detect  the  slightest  alteration  in  Dom  Cuthbert's  attitude 


CLOVEN   HOOFMARKS  267 

toward  him.  But  he  avoided  Brother  Aloysius  so  carefully 
during  the  remainder  of  his  stay  that  it  was  impossible  to 
test  the  Abbot's  knowledge  as  directly  as  he  could  have 
wished. 

The  night  before  Michael  was  to  leave  the  monastery,  a 
great  gale  blew  from  the  southwest  and  kept  him  wide 
awake  hour  after  hour  until  the  bell  for  Matins.  He  felt 
that  on  this  his  last  night  it  would  be  in  order  for  him  to 
attend  the  Office.  So  he  dressed  quickly  and  hurried  through 
the  wind-swept  corridor  into  the  Chapel.  Here,  in  a 
severity  of  long  droning  psalms,  he  tried  to  purge  his  mind 
of  all  it  had  acquired  fiom  the  shamelessness  of  Brother 
Aloysius.  He  was  so  far  successful  that  he  could  look 
Dom  Cuthbert  fearlessly  in  the  face  when  he  bade  him 
good-bye  next  day,  and,  as  he  coasted  over  the  downs 
through  the  calm  September  sunlight,  he  to  himself  seemed 
like  the  country  washed  by  the  serene  radiance  of  the 
tempest's  aftermath. 


CHAPTER   VIII 
MIRRORS 

MICHAEL  somehow  felt  shy  when  he  heard  his 
mother's  voice  telling  him  to  come  into  her  room. 
He  had  run  upstairs  and  knocked  excitedly  at  her 
door  before  the  shyness  overwhelmed  him,  but  it  was  too 
late  not  to  enter,  and  he  sat  down  to  give  her  the  account 
of  his  holidays.  Rather  dull  it  seemed,  and  robbed  of  all 
vitality  by  the  barrier  which  both  his  mother  and  he  hastened 
to  erect  between  themselves. 

"Well,  dear,  did  you  enjoy  yourself  at  this  Monastery?" 

"Oh,  rather." 

"Is  the — what  do  you  call  him — the  head  monk  a  nice 
man?" 

"Oh,  yes,  awfully  decent." 

"And  your  friend  Chator,  did  he  enjoy  himself?" 

"Oh,  rather.  Only  he  had  to  go  before  me.  Did  you 
enjoy  yo'irself  abroad,  mother?" 

"Very  much,  dear,  thank  you.  We  had  lovely  weather 
all  the  time." 

"We  had  awfully  ripping  weather  too." 

"Have  you  got  everything  ready  for  school  in  the  morn- 
ing?" 

"There's  nothing  much  to  get.  I  suppose  I'll  go  into 
Cray's  —  the  Upper  Fifth.  Do  you  want  me  now, 
mother?" 

268 


MIRRORS  269 


"No,  dear.     I  have  one  or  two  letters  to  write." 

"I  think  I'll  go  round  and  see  if  Chator's  home  yet. 
You  don't  mind?" 

"Don't  be  late  for  dinner." 

"Oh,  no,  rather  not." 

Going  downstairs  from  his  mother's  room,  Michael  had 
half  an  impulse  to  turn  back  and  confide  in  her  the  real 
account  of  his  holidays.  But  on  reflection  he  protested 
to  himself  that  his  mother  looked  upon  him  as  immaculate, 
and  he  felt  unwilling  to  disturb  by  such  a  revolutionary 
step  the  approved   tranquillities  of  maternal  ignorance. 

Mr.  Cray,  his  new  form-master,  was  a  man  of  distinct 
personality,  and  possessed  a  considerable  amount  of  educa- 
tive ability;  but  unfortunately  for  Michael  the  zest  of 
c  assies  had  withered  in  his  heart  after  his  disappointment 
over  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Certificate.  Therefore 
Mr.  Cray  with  his  bright  archaeology  and  chatty  scholar- 
ship bored  Michael  more  profoundly  than  any  of  his 
masters  so  far  had  bored  him.  Mr.  Cray  resented  this 
attitude  very  bitterly,  being  used  to  keenness  in  his  form, 
and  Michael's  dreary  indolence,  which  often  came  nearer 
to  insolence,  irritated  him.  As  for  the  plodding,  inky 
sycophants  who  fawned  upon  Mr.  Cray's  informativeness, 
Michael  regarded  them  with  horror  and  contempt.  He 
sat  surrounded  by  the  butts  and  bugbears  of  his  school-life. 
All  the  boys  whose  existence  he  had  deplored  seemed  to 
have  clambered  arduously  into  the  Upper  Fifth  just  to 
enrage  him  with  the  sight  of  their  industrious  propinquity. 
There  they  sat  w^ith  their  scraggy  wrists  protruding  from 
shrinking  coat-sleeves,  with  ambitious  noses  glued  to  their 
books,  with  pens  and  pencils  neatly  disposed  for  demon- 
strative annotation,  and  nearly  all  of  them  conscious 
of  having  figured  in  the  school-list  with  the  printed  bubble 
of  the  Oxford  and  Cambridge  Higher  Certificate  beside 
their   names.     Contemplating   them   in  the  mass,   Michael 


270  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

scarcely  knew  how  he  would  endure  another  dusty  year  of 
school. 

''And  now  we  come  to  the  question  of  the  Homeric 
gate — the  Homeric  gate,  Fane,  when  you  can  condescend 
to  our  level,"  said  Mr.  Cray  severely. 

"I'm  listening,  sir,"  said  Michael  wearily, 

"Of  course  the  earliest  type  of  gate  was  without  hinges 
— without  hinges,  Fane!  Very  much  like  your  attention, 
Fane!" 

Several  sycophants  giggled  at  this,  and  Michael,  gazing 
very  earnestly  at  Mr.  Cray's  benign  but  somewhat  dirty 
bald  head,  took  a  bloody  revenge  upon  those  in  reach  of 
his  javelin  of  quadruple  penholders. 

"For  Monday,"  said  Mr.  Cray,  when  he  had  done  with 
listening  to  the  intelligent  advice  of  his  favorite  pupils 
on  the  subject  of  gates  ancient  and  modern,  "for  Monday 
the  essay  will  be  on  Patriotism." 

Michael  groaned  audibly. 

"Isn't  there  an  alternative  subject,  sir?"  he  gloomily 
inquired. 

"Does  Fane  dislike  abstractions?"  said  Mr.  Cray. 
"Curious!  Well,  if  Fane  wishes  for  an  alternative  subject, 
of  course  Fane  must  be  obeyed.  The  alternative  subject 
will  be  An  Examination  into  the  Fundamental  Doctrines 
of  Hegelian  Idealism.     Does  that  suit  Fane?" 

"Very  well  indeed,"  said  Michael,  who  had  never  heard 
of  Hegel  until  that  moment,  but  vowed  to  himself  that 
somehow  between  this  muggy  Friday  afternoon  and  next 
Monday  morning  he  would  conquer  the  fellow's  opinions. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  essay  proved  perfectly  easy  with 
the  assistance  of  The  Popular  Encyclopedia,  though  Mr. 
Cray  called  it  a  piece  of  impudence  and  looked  almost 
baleful  when  Michael  showed  it  up. 

From  this  atmosphere  of  complacent  effort  Michael 
withdrew   one    afternoon    to    consult    Father   Viner    about 


MIRRORS  271 


his  future.  Underneath  the  desire  for  practical  advice 
was  a  desire  to  talk  about  himself,  and  Michael  was  dis- 
appointed on  arriving  at  Father  Viner's  rooms  to  hear  that 
he  was  out.  However,  learning  that  there  was  a  prospect 
of  his  speedy  return,  he  came  in  at  the  landlady's  suggestion 
to  amuse  himself  with  a  book  while  he  waited. 

Wandering  round  the  big  bay-windowed  room  with  its 
odor  of  tobacco  and  books,  and  casting  a  careless  glance 
at  Father  Viner's  desk,  Michael  caught  sight  of  his  own 
name  in  the  middle  of  a  neatly  written  letter  on  the  top 
of  a  pile  of  others.  He  could  not  resist  taking  a  long 
glance  to  see  the  address  and  verify  the  allusion  to  himself, 
and  with  this  longer  glance  curiously  conquered  so  com- 
pletely the  prejudice  against  prying  into  other  people's 
correspondence  that  Michael,  breathing  nervously  under  the 
dread  of  interruption,  took  up  the  letter  and  read  it  right 
through.  It  was  in  his  present  mood  of  anxiety  about 
himself  very  absorbing. 

Clere  Abbey 

Michael  Mass. 

PAXHh 
Dear   Brother: 

I  have  been  intending  to  write  to  you  about  young 
Michael  Fane  ever  since  he  left  us,  and  your  letter  of  in- 
quiry has  had  the  effect  of  bringing  me  up  to  the  point. 

I  hardly  know  what  to  tell  you.  He's  a  curious  youth, 
very  lovable,  and  with  enough  brains  to  make  one  wish 
that  he  might  have  a  vocation  for  the  priesthood.  At  the 
same  time  I  noticed  while  he  was  with  us,  especially  after 
the  admirable  Chator  departed,  an  overwhelming  languor 
which  I  very  much  deplored. 

He  spent  much  of  his  time  with  a  very  bad  hat  indeed, 
whom  I  have  just  sent  away  from  Clere.  If  you  ever  come 
across  Mr.  Henry  Meats,  be  careful  of  him.  Arbuthnot 
of  St.  Aidan's,  Holloway,  sent  him  to  me.  You  know 
Arbuthnot's  expansive  (and  for  his  friends  expensive) 
Christianit)^    This  last  effort  of  his  was  a  snorter,  a  soft, 


272  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

nasty,  hysterical,  little  blob  of  vice.  I  ought  to  have  seen 
through  the  fellow  before  I  did.  Heaven  knows  I  get 
enough  of  the  tag-rag  of  the  Movement  trying  to  be  taken 
on  at  Clere.  I  suppose  the  monastic  life  will  always  make 
an  imperishable  appeal  to  the  worst,  and,  thank  God,  some 
of  the  best.  I  mention  this  fellow  to  you  because  I'm 
afraid  he  and  Michael  may  meet  again,  and  I  don't  at  all 
like  the  idea  of  their  acquaintanceship  progressing,  especially 
as  it  was  unluckily  begun  beneath  a  religious  roof.  So 
keep  an  eye  on  Mr.  Henry  Meats.     He's  really  bad. 

Another  fellow  I  don't  recommend  for  Michael  is  Percy 
Garrod.  Not  that  I  think  there  is  much  danger  in  that 
direction,  for  I  fancy  Michael  was  very  cold  with  him. 
Percy  is  a  decent,  honest,  hard-working,  common  ass,  with 
a  deep  respect  for  the  Pope  and  the  Polytechnic.  He's  a 
trifle  zealous,  however,  with  bastard  information  about 
physical  science,  and  not  at  all  the  person  I  should  choose 
to  lecture  Michael  on  the  complications  of  adolescence. 

We  are  getting  on  fairly  well  at  Clere,  but  it's  hard  work 
trying  to  make  this  country  believe  there  is  the  slightest 
necessity  for  the  contemplative  life.  I  hope  all  goes  well 
with  you  and  your  work. 

Yours  affectionately  in  Xt., 

CuTHBERT  Manners^  O.S.B. 

Poor  Michael.  His  will  be  a  difficult  position  one  day. 
I  feel  on  re-reading  this  letter  that  I've  told  you  nothing 
you  don't  already  know.  But  he's  one  of  those  elusive 
boys  who  have  lived  within  themselves  too  much  and  too 
long. 

Michael  put  this  letter  back  where  he  had  found  it,  and 
wondered  how  much  of  the  contents  would  be  discussed 
by  Father  Viner.  He  was  glad  that  Brother  Aloysius  had 
vanished,  because  Brother  Aloysius  had  become  like  a  bad 
dream  with  which  he  was  unwilling  in  the  future  to  renew 
acquaintance.  On  his  own  character  Dom  Cuthbert 
had  not  succeeded  in  throwing  very  much  light — at  any 
rate  not  in  this  letter.     Father  Viner  came  in  to  interrupt 


MIRRORS  273 


Michael's  meditations,   and   began   at   once   to    discuss   the 
letter. 

"The  Lord  Abbot  of  Clere  thinks  you're  a  dreamer," 
he  began  abruptly. 

"Does  he,  Mr.  Viner?"  echoed  Michael,  who  somehow 
could  never  bring  himself  to  the  point  of  addressing  the 
priest  as  "Father."     Shyness  always  overcame  his  will. 

"What  do  you  dream  about,  young  Joseph?" 

"Oh,  I  only  think  about  a  good  many  things,  and  wonder 
what  I'm  going  to  be  and  all  that,"  Michael  replied.  "I 
don't  want  to  go  into  the  Indian  Civil  Service  or  anything 
with  exams.  I'm  sick  of  exams.  What  I  most  want  to  do 
is  to  get  away  from  school.  I'm  sick  of  school,  and  the 
fellows  in  the  Upper  Fifth  are  a  greasy  crowd  of  swats 
always  sucking  up  to  Cray." 

"And  who  is  the  gentleman  with  the  crustacean  name 
that  attracts  these  barnacles?" 

"Cray?  Oh,  he's  my  form-master,  and  tries  to  be 
funny." 

"So  do  I,  Michael,"  confessed  Mr.  Viner. 

"Oh,  well,  that's  different.  I'm  not  bound  to  listen  to 
you,  if  I  don't  want  to.  But  I  have  to  listen  to  Cray  for 
eighteen  hours  every  week,  and  he  hates  me  because  I  w^on't 
take  notes  for  his  beastly  essays.  I  think  I'll  ask  my  mater 
if  I  can't  leave  school  after  this  term." 

"And  then  what  would  you  do?" 

"Oh,  I  don't  know.     I  could  settle  when  I'd  left." 

"What  about  Oxford?" 

"Well,  I  could  go  to  Oxford  later  on." 

"I  don't  think  you  could  quite  so  easily  as  you  think. 
Anyway,  you'd  much  better  go  to  Oxford  straight  from 
school." 

"Eight  more  terms  before  I  leave.     Phew!" 

Michael  groaned.  "It's  such  a  terrible  waste  of  time,  and 
I  know  Oxford's  ripping." 


274  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

'Terhaps   something   will    come    along    to    interest    you. 

And  always,  dear  boy,  don't  forget  you  have  your  religion." 

"Yes,    I   know,"   said   Michael.     "But   at   the  Abbey   I 

met  some  people  who  were  supposed  to  be  religious,   and 

they  were  pretty  good  rotters." 

The  priest  looked  at  him  and  seemed  inclined  to  let 
Michael  elaborate  this  topic,  but  almost  immediately  he 
dismissed  it  with  a  commonplace. 

"Oh,  well,"  Michael  sighed,  "I  suppose  something  will 
happen  soon  to  buck  me  up.  I  hope  so.  Perhaps  the 
Kensitites  will  start  making  rows  in  churches  again,"  he 
went  on  hopefully.  "Will  you  lend  me  the  Apocryphal 
Gospels?  We're  going  to  have  a  discussion  about  them  at 
the  De  Rebus  Ecclesiasticis." 

"Oh,  the  society  hasn't  broken  up?"  inquired  Mr.  Viner. 
"Rather  not.  Only  everybody's  changed  rather.  Chator's 
become  frightfully  Roman.  He  was  Sarum  last  term,  and 
he  thinks  I'm  frightfully  heretical,  only  of  course  I  say 
a  lot  I  don't  mean  just  to  rag  him.  I  say,  by  the  way, 
who  wrote  *In  a  Garden'?" 

"It  sounds  a  very  general  title,"  commented  Mr.  Viner, 
with  a  smile. 

"Well,  it's  some  poem  or  other." 

"Swinburne  wrote  a  poem  in  the  Second  Series  of  Poems 
and  Ballads  called  'A  Forsaken  Garden.'  Is  that  what  you 
mean?" 

"Perhaps.  Is  it  a  famous  poem?" 
"Yes,  I  should  say  it  was  distinctly." 
"Well,  that  must  be  it.  Cray  tried  to  be  funny  about 
it  to-day  in  form,  and  said  to  me,  'Good  heavens,  haven't 
you  read  "In  a  Garden"?'  And  I  said  I'd  never  heard 
of  it.  And  then  he  said  in  his  funny  way  to  the  class, 
*I  suppose  you've  all  read  it.'  And  none  of  them  had, 
which  made  him  look  rather  an  ass.  So  he  said  we'd  better 
read  it  by  next  week." 


MIRRORS  275 


"I  can  lend  you  my  Swinburne.  Only  take  care  of  it," 
said  Mr.  Viner.     ''It's  a  wonderful  poem. 

"In  a  coign  of  the  cliff  between  lowland  and  highland, 
At  the  sea-down's  edge  between  windward  and  lee. 
Walled  round  with  rocks  as  an  inland  island, 
The  ghost  of  a  garden  fronts  the  sea." 

"I  say,"  exclaimed  Michael  eagerly,  "I  never  knew 
Swinburne  was  a  really  great  poet.  And,  fancy,  he's  alive 
now." 

"Alive,  and  living  at  Putney,"  said  Mr.  Viner. 

"And  yet  he  wrote  what  you've  just  said!" 

"He  wrote  that,  and  many  other  things  too.     He  wrote: 

"Before  the  beginning  of  years 

There  came  to  the  making  of  man 
Time,  with  a  gift  of  tears; 

Grief,  with  a  glass  that  ran; 
Pleasure,  with   pain   for  leaven; 

Summer,  with  flowers  that  fell; 
Remembrance  fallen  from  heaven. 

And  madness  risen  from  hell." 

"Good  lord,"  sighed  Michael.  "And  he's  in  Putney 
at  this  very  moment." 

Michael  went  home  clasping  close  the  black  volume, 
and  in  his  room  that  night,  while  the  gas  jet  flamed  ex- 
citably in  defiance  of  rule,  he  read  almost  right  through 
the  Second  Series  of  Poems  and  Ballads.  It  was  midnight 
when  he  turned  down  the  gas  and  sank  feverishly  into 
bed.  For  a  long  while  he  was  saying  to  himself  isolated 
lines:  The  wet  skies  harden;  the  gates  are  barred  on  the 
summer  side.  The  rose  red  acacia  that  mocks  the  rose. 
Sleep,  and  if  life  was  bitter  to  thee,  brother.  For  whom  all 
winds  are  quiet  as  the  sun,  all  waters  as  the  shore. 

In  school  on  Monday  morning  Mr.  Cray,  to  Michael's 


276  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

regret,  did  not  allude  to  the  command  that  his  class  should 
read  *'In  a  Garden."  Michael  was  desperately  anxious  at 
once  to  tell  him  how  much  he  had  loved  the  poem  and 
to  remind  him  of  the  real  title,  "A  Forsaken  Garden."  At 
last  he  could  bear  it  no  longer  and  went  up  flushed  with 
enthusiasm  to  Mr.  Cray's  desk,  nominally  to  inquire  into 
an  alleged  mistake  in  his  Latin  Prose,  but  actually  to 
inform  Mr.  Cray  of  his  delight  in  Swinburne.  When  the 
grammatical  blunder  had  been  discussed,  Michael  said  with 
as  much  nonchalance  as  he  could  assume: 

"I  read  that  poem,  sir.     I  think  it's  ripping." 

"What  poem?"  repeated  Mr.  Cray  vaguely.  "Oh,  yes, 
'Enoch  Arden.'  " 

"Enoch  Arden,"  stammered  Michael.  "I  thought  you 
said  *In  a  Garden.'  I  read  'A  Forsaken  Garden,'  by 
Swinburne." 

Mr.  Cray  put  on  his  most  patronizing  manner. 

"My  poor  Fane,  have  you  never  heard  of  'Enoch  Arden  ?' 
Perhaps  you've  never  even  heard  of  Tennyson?" 

"But  Swinburne's  good,  isn't  he,  sir?" 

"Swinburne  is  very  well,"  said  Mr.  Cray.  "Oh,  yes, 
Swinburne  will  do,  if  you  like  rose-jam.  But  I  don't  recom- 
mend Swinburne  for  you,  Fane." 

Then  Mr.  Cray  addressed  his  class: 

"Did  you  all  read  'Enoch  Arden?'" 

"Yes,  sir,"  twittered  the  Upper  Fifth. 

"Fane,  however,  with  that  independence  of  judgment 
which  distinguishes  his  Latin  Prose  from,  let  us  say,  the 
prose  of  Cicero,  preferred  to  read  'A  Forsaken  Garden'  by 
one  Swinburne." 

The  Upper  Fifth  giggled  dutifully. 

"Perhaps  Fane  will  recite  to  us  his  discovery,"  said 
Mr.  Cray,  scratching  his  scurfy  head  with  the  gnawed  end 
of  a  penholder. 

Michael  blushed  resentfully,  and  walked  back  to  his  desk. 


MIRRORS  277 


"No?"  said  Mr.  Cray  with  an  affectation  of  great  sur- 
prise. 

Then  he  and  the  Upper  Fifth,  contented  with  their 
superiority,  began  to  chew  and  rend  some  tough  Greek 
particles  which  ultimately  became  digestible  enough  to  be 
assimilated  by  the  Upper  Fifth;  while  Mr.  Cray  himself 
purred  over  his  cubs,  looking  not  very  unlike  a  mangy  old 
lioness. 

"Eight  more  terms,"  groaned  Michael  to  himself. 

Mr.  Cray  was  not  so  blind  to  his  pupils'  need  for  mild 
intellectual  excitement,  however  much  he  might  scorn 
the  easy  emotions  of  Swinburne.  He  really  grew  lyrical 
over  Homeric  difficulties,  and  even  spoke  enthusiastically 
of  Mr.  Mackail's  translation  of  the  Georgics;  but  always 
he  managed  to  conceal  the  nobility  of  his  theme  beneath 
a  mass  of  what  he  called  "minor  points."  He  would  create 
his  own  rubbish  heap  and  invite  the  Upper  Fifth  to  scratch 
in  it  for  pearls.  One  day  a  question  arose  as  to  the  exact 
meaning  of  ovXoxvraL  in  Homer.  Michael  would  have 
been  perfectly  content  to  believe  that  it  meant  "whole 
barleycorns,"  until  Mr.  Cray  suggested  that  it  might  be 
equivalent  to  the  Latin  "mola,"  meaning  "grain  coarsely 
ground."  An  exhausting  discussion  followed,  illustrated 
by  examples  from  every  sort  of  writer,  all  of  which  had  to 
be  taken  down  in  notes  in  anticipation  of  a  still  more  ex- 
hausting essay  on  the  subject. 

"The  meal  may  be  trite,"  said  Mr.  Cray,  "but  not  the 
subject,"  he  added,  chuckling.  "However,  I  have  only- 
touched  the  fringe  of  it;  you  will  find  the  arguments  fully 
set  forth  in  Buttmann's  Lexilogus.  Who  possesses  that 
invaluable  work?" 

Nobody  in  the  Upper  Fifth  possessed  it,  but  all  anxiously 
made  a  note  of  it,  in  order  to  acquire  it  over  the  counter  of 
the  Book  Room  downstairs. 


278  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"No  use,"  said  Mr.  Cray.  "Buttmann's  Lexilogus  is 
now  out  of  print." 

Michael  pricked  up  at  this.  The  phrase  lent  a  curious 
flavor  of  Romance  to  the  dull  book. 

"No  doubt,  however,  you  will  be  able  to  obtain  it  second- 
hand," added  Mr.  Cray. 

The  notion  of  tracking  down  Buttmann's  Lexilogus 
possessed  the  Upper  Fifth.  Eagerly  after  school  the 
diligent  ones  discussed  ways  and  means.  Parties  were 
formed,  almost  one  might  say  expeditions,  to  rescue  the 
valuable  work  from  oblivion.  Michael  stood  contemptu- 
ously aside  from  the  buzz  of  self-conscious  effort  round 
him,  although  he  had  made  up  his  own  mind  to  be  one  of  the 
first  to  obtain  the  book.  Levy,  however,  secured  the  first 
copy  for  fourpence  in  Farringdon  Street,  earning  for  his 
sharpness  much  praise.  Another  boy  bought  one  for  three 
shillings  and  sixpence  in  Paddington,  the  price  one  would 
expect  to  pay,  if  not  a  Levy;  and  there  were  rumors 
of  a  copy  in  Kensington  High  Street.  To  Michael  the 
mart  of  London  from  earliest  youth  had  been  Hammer- 
smith Broadway,  and  thither  he  hurried,  hopeful  of  dis- 
covering Buttmann's  dingy  Lexilogus,  for  the  purchase  of 
which  he  had  thoughtfully  begged  a  sovereign  from  his 
mother.  Michael  did  not  greatly  covet  Buttmann's,  but  he 
was  sure  that  the  surplus  from  three  shillings  and  sixpence, 
possibly  even  from  fourpence,  would  be  very  welcome. 

He  found  at  last  in  a  turning  off  Hammersmith  Broadway 
a  wonderful  bookshop,  whose  rooms  upon  rooms  leading 
into  one  another  were  all  lined  and  loaded  with  every  kind 
of  book.  The  proprietor  soon  found  a  copy  of  Buttmann, 
which  he  sold  to  Michael  for  half  a  crown,  leaving  him 
with  fifteen  shillings  for  himself,  since  he  decided  that  it 
would  be  as  well  to  return  his  mother  at  least  half  a  crown 
from  her  sovereign.  The  purchase  completed,  Michael 
began  to  wander  round  the  shop,  taking  down  a  book  here, 


MIRRORS  279 


a  book  there,  dipping  into  them  from  the  top  of  a  ladder, 
sniffing  them,  clapping  their  covers  together  to  drive  aw^ay 
the  dust,  and  altogether  thoroughly  enjoying  himself,  vi^hile 
the  daylight  slow^ly  faded  and  street-lamps  came  vv^Inking 
into  ken  outside.  At  last,  just  as  the  shop-boy  w^as  putting 
up  the  shutters,  Michael  discovered  a  volume  bound  in  half- 
morocco  of  a  crude  gay  blue,  that  proved  on  inspection  to 
contain  the  complete  poetical  works  of  Algernon  Charles 
Swinburne,  for  the  sum  of  seventeen  shillings  and  sixpence. 

What  was  now  left  of  his  golden  sovereign  that  should 
have  bought  so  much  besides  Buttmann's  brown  and  musty 
Lexilogus  ? 

Michael  approached  the  proprietor  with  the  volume  in 
his  hand. 

"How  much?"  he  asked,  with  a  queer  choking  sensation, 
a  throbbing  excitement,  for  he  had  never  before  even 
imagined  the  expenditure  of  seventeen  shillings  and  six- 
pence on  one  book. 

"What's  this?"  said  the  proprietor,  putting  on  his  spec- 
tacles. "Oh,  yes,  Swinburne — pirated  American  edition. 
Seventeen  shillings  and  sixpence." 

"Couldn't  you  take  less?"  asked  Michael,  with  a  vague 
hope  that  he  might  rescue  a  shilling  for  his  mother,  if  not 
for  cigarettes. 

"Take  less?"  repeated  the  bookseller.  "Good  gracious, 
young  man,  do  you  know  what  you'd  have  to  pay  for 
Swinburne's  stuff  separate?  Something  like  seven  or  eight 
pounds,  and  then  they'd  be  all  in  different  volumes.  Whereas 
here  you've  got — lemme  see — Atalanta  in  Calydon,  Chaste- 
lard,  Poems  and  Ballads,  Songs  before  Sunrise,  Bothwell, 
Tristram  of  LA^onesse,  Songs  of  Two  Nations,  and  heaven 
knows  what  not.  I  call  seventeen  shillings  and  sixpence 
very  cheap  for  what  you  might  almost  call  a  man's  life- 
work.     Shall  I  wTap  it  up?" 


28o  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"Yes,  please,"  said  Michael,  gasping  with  the  effect  of 
the  plunge. 

But  when  that  night  he  read 

Swallow,  my  sister,   O   fair  swift  swallow, 

he  forgot  all  about  the  cost. 

The  more  of  Swinburne  that  Michael  read,  the  more 
impatient  he  grew  of  school.  The  boredom  of  Mr.  Cray's 
class  became  stupendous;  and  Michael,  searching  for 
some  way  to  avoid  it,  decided  to  give  up  Classics  and  apply 
for  admission  to  the  History  Sixth,  w^hich  w^as  a  small 
association  of  boys  who  had  drifted  into  this  appendix 
for  the  purpose  of  defeating  the  ordinary  rules  of  pro- 
motion. For  instance,  when  the  Captain  of  the  School 
Eleven  had  not  attained  the  privileged  Sixth,  he  was  often 
allowed  to  enter  the  History  Sixth,  in  order  that  he  might 
achieve  the  intellectual  dignity  which  consorted  with  his 
athletic  prowess. 

Michael  had  for  some  time  envied  the  leisure  of  the 
History  Sixth,  with  its  general  air  of  slackness  and  its 
form-master,  Mr.  Kirkham,  who,  on  account  of  holding 
many  administrative  positions  important  to  the  athletic  life 
of  the  school,  was  often  absent  from  his  class-room.  He 
now  racked  his  brains  for  an  excuse  to  achieve  the  idle 
bliss  of  these  charmed  few.  Finally  he  persuaded  his  mother 
to  write  to  the  Headmaster  and  apply  for  his  admission,  on 
the  grounds  of  the  greater  utility  of  History  in  his  future 
profession. 

"But  what  are  you  going  to  be,  Michael?"  asked  his 
mother. 

"I  don't  know,  but  you  can  say  I'm  going  to  be  a  barrister 
or  something." 

"Is  History  better  for  a  barrister?" 

"I  don't  know,  but  you  can  easily  say  you  think  it  is." 


MIRRORS  281 


In  the  end  his  mother  wrote  to  Dr.  Brownjohn,  and 
one  gray  November  afternoon  the  Headmaster  sailed  into 
the  class-room  of  the  Upper  Fifth,  extricated  Michael  with 
a  roar,  and  marched  with  him  up  and  down  the  dusky 
corridor  in  a  ferocious  discussion  of  the  proposal. 

"Why  do  you  want  to  give  up  your  Classics?"  bellowed 
Dr.  Brownjohn. 

In  the  echoing  corridor  Michael's  voice  sounded  pain- 
fully weak  against  his  monitor's. 

"I  don't  want  to  give  them  up,  sir.  Only  I  would  like 
to  learn  History  as  well,"  he  explained. 

"What's  the  good  of  History?"  roared  the  Doctor. 

"I  thought  I'd  like  to  learn  it,"  said  Michael. 

"You  shouldn't  think,  you  infamous  young  sluggard." 

"And  I  could  go  on  reading  Classics,  sir,  I  could  really." 

"Bah!"  shouted  Dr.  Brownjohn.  "Impudent  nonsense, 
you  young  sloth.    Why  didn't  you  get  your  Certificate?" 

"I  failed  in  Arithmetic,  sir." 

"You'll  fail  in  your  whole  life,  boy,"  prophesied  Dr. 
Brownjohn  in  bull-deep  accents  of  reproach.  "Aren't  you 
ashamed  of  yourself?" 

"No,  sir,"  said  Michael.  "I  don't  think  I  am,  because 
I  worked  jolly  hard." 

"Worked,  you  abominable  little  loafer?  You've  never 
worked  in  your  life.  You  could  be  the  finest  scholar  in 
the  school,  and  you're  merely  a  coruscation  of  slatternly, 
slipshod  paste.  Bah !  What  do  you  expect  to  do  when  you 
leave  school?    Um?" 

"I  want  to  go  to  Oxford." 

"Then  get  the  Balliol  Scholarship." 

"I  don't  want  to  be  a  Balliol,"  said  Michael. 

"Then  get  the  major  scholarship  at  Trinity,  Cambridge." 

"I  don't  intend  to  go  to  Cambridge,"  said  Michael. 

"Good  heavens,  boy,"  roared  Dr.  Brownjohn,  "are  you 
trying  to  arrange  your  own  career?" 
19 


282  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

*'No,  sir,"  said  Michael.  "But  I  want  to  go  to  St. 
Mary's,  Oxford." 

''Then  get  a  scholarship  at  St.  Mary's." 

''But  I  don't  want  to  be  a  Scholar  of  any  college.  I 
want  to  go  up  as  a  Commoner." 

The  veins  on  Dr.  Brownjohn's  forehead  swelled  with 
wrath,  astonishment  and  dismay. 

"Get  out  of  my  sight,"  he  thundered.  "Get  back  into 
your  class-room.  I've  done  with  you;  I  take  no  more 
interest  in  you.  You're  here  to  earn  glory  for  your  school, 
you're  here  to  gain  a  scholarship,  not  to  air  your  own 
opinions.  Get  out  of  my  sight,  you  young  scoundrel. 
How  dare  you  argue  with  me?  You  shan't  go  into  the 
History  Sixth!  You  shall  stew  in  your  own  obstinate 
juice  in  the  Upper  Fifth  until  I  choose  to  move  you  out 
of  it.  Do  you  hear?  Go  back  into  your  class-room. 
I'll  write  to  your  mother.  She's  an  idiotic  woman,  and 
you're  a  slovenly,  idle,  good-for-nothing  cub." 

Overwhelmed  with  failure  and  very  sensitive  to  the  in- 
quisitive glances  of  his  classmates,  Michael  sat  down  in 
his  own  desk  again  as  unobtrusively  as  he  could. 

Michael's  peace  of  mind  was  not  increased  by  the  con- 
sciousness of  Mr.  Cray's  knowledge  of  his  appeal  to  with- 
draw from  the  Upper  Fifth,  and  he  became  exposed  to 
a  large  amount  of  sarcasm  in  allusion  to  his  expressed 
inclination  tow^ard  history.  He  was  continually  referred 
to  as  an  authority  on  Constitutions;  he  was  invited  to 
bring  forward  comparisons  from  more  modern  times  to 
help  the  elucidation  of  the  Syracusan  expedition  or  the 
Delian  Confederacy. 

All  that  Michael  gained  from  Mr.  Cray  was  a  passion 
for  second-hand  books — the  latest  and  most  fervid  of  all 
his  collecting  hobbies. 

One  wintry  evening  in  Elson's  Bookshop  at  Hammer- 
smith  he  was   enjoying  himself   on   the   top   of   a   ladder, 


MIRRORS  283 


when  he  became  aware  of  an  interested  gaze  directed 
at  himself  over  the  dull-gilt  edges  of  a  large  and  expensive 
work  on  Greek  sculpture.  The  face  that  so  regarded  him 
was  at  once  fascinating  and  repulsive.  The  glittering 
blue  eyes  full  of  laughter  were  immediately  attractive,  but 
something  in  the  pointed  ears  and  curled-back  lips,  some- 
thing in  the  peculiarly  white  fingers  faintly  penciled  about 
the  knuckles  with  fine  black  hairs,  and  after  a  moment  some- 
thing cruel  in  the  bright  blue  eyes  themselves  restrained 
him  from  an  answering  smile. 

"What  is  the  book,  Hyacinthus?"  asked  the  stranger, 
and  his  voice  was  so  winning  and  so  melodious  in  the 
shadowy  bookshop  that  Michael  immediately  fell  into  the 
easiest  of  conversations. 

"Fond  of  books?"  asked  the  stranger.  "Oh,  by  the  way, 
my  name  is  Wilmot,  Arthur  Wilmot." 

Something  in  Wilmot's  manner  made  Michael  suppose 
that  he  ought  to  be  familiar  with  the  name,  and  he  tried  to 
recall  it. 

"What's  your  name?"  the  stranger  went  on. 

Michael  told  his  name,  and  also  his  school,  and  before 
very  long  a  good  deal  about  himself. 

"I  live  near  you,"  said  Mr.  Wilmot.  "We'll  walk  along 
presently.  I'd  like  you  to  dine  with  me  one  night  soon. 
When?" 

"Oh,  any  time,"  said  Michael,  trying  to  speak  as  if 
invitations  to  dinner  occurred  to  him  three  or  four  times  a 
day. 

"Here's  my  card,"  said  the  stranger.  "You'd  better 
show  it  to  your  mother — so  that  she'll  know  it's  all  right. 
I'm  a  writer,  you  know." 

"Oh,  yes,"  Michael  vaguely  agreed. 

"I  don't  suppose  you've  seen  any  of  my  stuflF.  I  don't 
publish  much.  Sometimes  I  read  my  poems  to  Interior 
people." 


284  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Michael  looked  puzzled. 

"Interior  is  my  name  for  the  people  who  understand. 
So  few  do.  I  should  say  you'd  be  sympathetic.  You  look 
sympathetic.  You  remind  me  of  those  exquisite  boys  who 
in  scarlet  hose  run  delicately  with  beakers  of  w^ine  or  stand 
in  groups  about  the  corners  of  old  Florentine  pictures." 

Michael  tried  to  look  severe,  and  yet,  after  the  Upper 
Fifth,  even  so  direct  and  embarrassing  a  compliment  was 
slightly  pleasant. 

"Shall  we  go  along?  To-night  the  Hammersmith  Road 
is  full  of  mystery.  But,  first,  shall  I  not  buy  you  a  book — 
some  exquisite  book  full  of  strange  perfumes  and  passion- 
ate courtly  gestures?  And  so  you  are  at  school?  How 
wonderful  to  be  at  school!  How  Sicilian!  Strange  youth, 
you  should  have  been  sung  by  Theocritus,  or,  better,  been 
crowned  with  myrtle  by  some  wonderful  unknown  Greek, 
some  perfect  blossom  of  the  Anthology." 

Michael  laughed  rather  foolishly.  There  seemed  nothing 
else  to  do. 

"Won't  you  smoke?  These  Chiar  cigarettes  in  their 
diaphanous  paper  of  mildest  mauve  would  suit  your  oddly 
remote,  your  curiously  shy  glance.  You  had  better  not 
smoke  so  near  to  the  savage  confines  of  St.  James'  School? 
How  ascetic!  How  stringent!  What  book  shall  I  buy 
for  you,  O  greatly  to  be  envied  dreamer  of  Sicilian  dreams? 
Shall  I  buy  you  Mademoiselle  de  Maupin,  so  that  all  her 
rococo  soul  may  dance  with  gilded  limbs  across  your  vision? 
Or  shall  I  buy  you  A  Rebours,  and  teach  you  to  live?  And 
yet  I  think  neither  would  suit  you  perfectly.  So  here  is  a 
volume  of  Pater — Imaginary  Portraits.  You  will  like  to 
read  of  Denys  I'Auxerrois.  One  day  I  myself  will  write 
an  imaginary  portrait  of  you,  wherein  your  secret,  sidelong 
smile  will  reveal  to  the  world  the  whole  art  of  youth." 

"But  really — thanks  very  much,"  stammered  Michael, 
who  was  beginning  to  suspect  the  stranger  of  madness — 


MIRRORS  285 


"it's  awfully  kind  of  you,  but,  really,  I  think  I'd  rather 
not." 

"Do  not  be  proud,"  said  Mr.  Wilmot.  "Pride  is  for 
the  pure  in  heart,  and  you  are  surely  not  pure  in  heart. 
Or  are  you?  Are  you  indeed  like  one  of  those  wonderful 
white  statues  of  antiquity,  unaware  of  the  soul  with  all  its 
maladies?" 

In  the  end,  so  urgent  was  Mr.  Wilmot,  Michael  accepted 
the  volume  of  Pater,  and  w^alked  with  the  stranger  through 
the  foggy  night.  Somehow  the  conversation  Vv'as  so  de- 
structive of  all  experience  that,  as  Michael  and  his  new 
friend  went  by  the  school-gates  and  perceived  beyond  the 
vast  bulk  of  St.  James'  looming,  Michael  felt  himself  a 
stranger  to  it  all,  as  if  he  never  again  would  with  a  crowd  of 
companions  surge  out  from  afternoon  school.  The  stranger 
came  as  far  as  the  corner  of  Carlington  Road  with  Michael. 

"I  will  write  to  your  mother  and  ask  her  to  let  you  dine 
with  me  one  night  next  week.     You  interest  me  so  much." 

Mr.  Wilmot  waved  a  pontifical  good-bye  and  vanished 
in  the  direction  of  Kensington. 

At  home  Michael  told  his  mother  of  the  adventure. 
She  looked  a  little  doubtful  at  his  account  of  Mr.  Wilmot. 

"Oh,  he's  all  right,  really.  Mother.  Only,  you  know, 
a  little  peculiar.    But  then  he's  a  poet." 

Next  day  came  a  letter  from  Mr.  Wilmot. 

205  Edwardes  Square^  W. 

November. 
Dear  Mrs.  Fane: 

I  must  apologize  for  inviting  your  son  to  dinner  so  un- 
ceremoniously. But  he  made  a  great  appeal  to  me,  sitting 
on  the  top  of  a  ladder  in  Elson's  Bookshop.  I  have  a 
library,  in  which  he  may  enjoy  himself  whenever  he  likes. 
Meanwhile,  may  he  come  to  dinner  with  me  on  Friday 
next?  Mr.  Johnstone,  the  Member  for  West  Kensington, 
is  coming  with  his  nephew  who  may  be  dull  without 
Michael.    Michael  tells  me  he  thinks  of  becoming  an  eccle- 


286  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

siastical  lawyer.  In  that  case  Jolinstone  will  be  particu- 
larly useful,  and  can  give  him  some  hints.  He's  a  personal 
friend  of  old  Dr.  Brownjohn.  With  many  apologies  for 
my  "impertinence," 

Yours  very  truly, 

Arthur  Wilmot. 

"This  is  a  perfectly  sensible  letter,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"Perhaps  I  thought  he  was  funnier  than  he  really  was. 
Does  he  say  anything  else  except  about  me  sitting  on  the 
top  of  a  ladder?" 

Somehow  Michael  was  disappointed  to  hear  that  this 
was  all. 


CHAPTER    IX 
THE    YELLOW   AGE 

DINNER  with  Mr.  Arthur  Wilmot  occupied  most 
of  Michael's  thoughts  for  a  week.  He  was 
mainly  concerned  about  his  costume,  and  he  was 
strenuously  importunate  for  a  tail-coat.  Mrs.  Fane,  how- 
ever, was  sure  that  a  dinner-jacket  would  better  become 
his  youthfulness.  Then  arose  the  question  of  stick-up 
collars.  Michael  pointed  out  that  very  soon  he  would  be 
sixteen,  and  that  here  was  a  fine  opportunity  to  leave  behind 
the  Polo  or  Shakespeare  collar. 

"You're  growing  up  so  quickly,  dearest  boy,"  sighed  his 
mother. 

Michael  was  anxious  to  have  one  of  the  new  double 
collars. 

"But  don't  they  look  rather  outref"  protested  Mrs. 
Fane. 

"Well,  Abercrombie,  the  Secretary  of  the  Fifteen,  wears 
one,"  observed   Michael. 

"Have  your  own  way,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Fane  gently. 

Two  or  three  days  before  the  dinner-party  Michael 
braved  everything  and  wore  one  of  the  new  double  collars 
to  school.  Its  extravagant  advent  among  the  discreet  neck- 
wear of  the  Upper  Fifth  caused  a  sensation.  Mr.  Cray 
himself  looked  curiously  once  or  twice  at  Michael,  who 
assumed  in  consequence  a  particularly  nonchalant  air,  and 
lounged  over  his  desk  even  more  than  usual. 

287 


288  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Are  you  going  on  the  stage,  Fane?"  enquired  Mr.  Cra}^ 
finally,  exasperated  by  Michael's  indolent  construing. 

"Not  that  I  know  of,"  said  Michael. 

"I  wasn't  sure  whether  that  collar  was  part  of  your 
get-up  as  an  eccentric  comedian." 

The  Upper  Fifth  released  its  well-born  laugh,  and 
Michael  scowled  at  his  master. 

However,  he  endured  the  sarcasm  of  the  first  two  days 
and  still  wore  the  new  collars,  vowing  to  himself  that 
presently  he  would  make  fresh  attacks  upon  the  convention 
of  school  attire,  since  apparently  he  was  able  thereby  to 
irritate  old  Cray. 

After  all,  the  dinner-party  was  not  so  exciting  as  he  had 
hoped  from  the  sample  of  his  new  friend's  conversation. 
To  be  sure  he  w^as  able  to  smoke  as  much  as  he  liked,  and 
drink  as  much  champagne  as  he  knew  how  without  warning 
headshakes;  but  Mr.  Johnstone,  the  Member  for  West 
Kensington,  was  a  moon-faced  bore,  and  his  nephew  turned 
out  to  be  a  lank  nonentity  on  the  despised  Modern  side. 
Mr.  Johnstone  talked  a  good  deal  about  the  Catholic 
movement,  which  somehow  during  the  last  few  weeks  was 
ceasing  to  interest  Michael  so  much  as  formerly.  Michael 
himself  ascribed  this  apostasy  to  his  perusal,  ladder-high, 
of  Zola's  novel  Lourdes  with  its  damaging  assaults  upon 
Christian  credulity.  The  Member  of  Parliament  seemed 
to  Michael,  after  his  psychical  adventures  of  the  past  few 
months,  curiously  dull  and  antique,  and  he  evidently  con- 
sidered Michael  affected.  However,  he  encouraged  the 
idea  of  ecclesiastical  law,  and  promised  to  talk  to  Dr. 
Brownjohn  about  Michael's  release  from  the  thraldom  of 
Classics.  As  for  the  nephew,  he  seemed  to  be  able  to  do 
nothing  but  stretch  the  muscles  of  his  chicken-like  neck 
and  ask  continually  whether  Michael  w^as  going  to  join 
the  Field  Club  that  some  obscure  Modern  Lower  Master 
was    in   travail    with    at    the    moment.      He    also    invited 


THE    YELLOW    AGE  289 


Michael  to  join  a  bicycling  club  that  apparently  met  at 
Surbiton  every  other  Saturday  afternoon.  Mr.  Wilmot 
contented  himself  with  silence  and  the  care  of  his  guests' 
entertainment. 

Finally    the    Member    for    West    Kensington    with    his 
crudely   jointed   nephew    departed   into   the   fog,    and    Mr. 
Wilmot,  with  an  exaggerated  sigh,  shut  the  front  door. 
"I  must  be  going,  too,"  said  Michael  grudgingly. 
"My  dear  boy,  the  evening  has  scarcely  begun,"  objected 
Mr.  Wilmot.     "Come  upstairs  to  my  library,  and  tell  me 
all  about  your  opinions,  and  whether  you  do  not  think  that 
everything  is  an  affectation." 
They  went  up  together. 

"Every  year  I  redecorate  this  room,"  Mr.  Wilmot  ex- 
plained. "Last  year  it  was  apple-green  set  out  with  cherry- 
red.  Now  I  am  become  a  mysterious  peacock-blue,  for 
lately  I  have  felt  terribly  old.  How  well  this  uncertain 
tint  suits  your  fresh  languor." 

Michael  admired  the  dusky  blue  chamber  with  the  plain 
mirrors  of  tarnished  gilt,  the  gleaming  books  and  exotic 
engravings,  and  the  heterogeneous  finery  faintly  effeminate. 
He  buried  himself  in  a  deep  embroidered  chair,  with  an 
ebony  box  of  cigarettes  at  his  feet,  while  Mr.  Wilmot, 
after  a  myriad  mincing  preliminaries,  sought  out  various 
highly  colored  bottles  of  liqueurs. 

"This  is  a  jolly  ripping  room,"  sighed  Michael. 
"It  represents  a  year's  moods,"  said  Mr.  Wilmot. 
"And  then  will  you  change  it?"  asked  Michael. 
"Perhaps.     The  most  subtly  painted  serpent  casts  ulti- 
mately its  slough.     Creme-de-Menthe?" 

"Yes,  please,"  said  Michael,  who  would  have  accepted 
anything  in  his  present  receptive  condition. 

"And  what  do  you  think  of  life?"  enquired  Mr.  Wilmot, 
taking  his  place  on  a  divan  opposite  Michael.  "Do  you 
mind  if  I  smoke  my  Jicky-scented  hookah?"  he  added. 


290  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Not  at  all,"  said  Michael.  "These  cigarettes  are  jolly 
ripping.  I  think  life  at  school  is  frightfully  dull — except, 
of  course,  when  one  goes  out.     Only  I  don't  often." 

"Dull?"  repeated  Mr.  Wilmot.  "Listen  to  the  amazing 
cruelty  of  youth  that  finds  even  his  adventurous  Sicilian 
existence  dull." 

"Well,  it  is,"  said  Michael.  "I  think  I  used  to  like  it, 
but  now^adays  everything  gets  fearfully  stale  almost  at 
once." 

"Already  your  life  has  been  lived?"  queried  Mr.  Wilmot 
very  anxiously. 

"Well,  not  exactly,"  Michael  replied,  vi^Ith  a  quick 
glance  toward  his  host  to  make  sure  he  was  not  joking. 
"I  expect  that  when  I  leave  school  I  shall  get  interested 
again.  Only  just  lately  I've  given  up  everything.  First 
I  was  keen  on  Footer,  and  then  I  got  keen  on  Ragging, 
and  then  I  got  keen  on  Work  even"  (this  was  confessed 
apologetically)  "and  just  lately  I've  been  keen  on  the 
Church — only  now  I  find   that's  pretty  stale." 

"The  Church!"  echoed  Mr.  Wilmot.  "How  wonder- 
ful! The  dim  Gothic  glooms,  the  somber  hues  of  stained 
glass,  the  incense-wreathed  acolytes,  the  muttering  priests, 
the  bedizened  banners  and  altars  and  images.  Ah,  elusive 
and  particolored  vision  that  once  was  mine!" 

"Then  I  got  keen  on  Swinburne,"  said  Michael. 

"You  advance  along  the  well-worn  path  of  the  Interior 
and  Elect,"  said  Mr.  Wilmot. 

"Pm  still  keen  on  Swinburne,  but  he  makes  me  feel 
hopeless.     Sad   and  hopeless,"  said  Michael. 

"Under  the  weight  of  sin?"    asked  Mr.  Wilmot. 

"Not  exactly — because  he  seems  to  have  done  everything 
and " 

"You'd  like  to?" 

"Yes,  I  would,"  said  Michael.  "Only  one  can't  live 
like  a  Roman  Emperor  at  a  public  school.     What  I  hate 


THE    YELLOW    AGE 29^ 

is  the  way  everj^body  thinks  you  ought  to  be  interested  in 
things  that  aren't  really  interesting  at  all.  What  people 
can't  understand  about  me  is  that  I  could  be  keener  than 
anybody  about  things  schoolmasters  and  that  kind  don't 
think  right  or,  at  any  rate,  important.  I  don't  mean  to 
say  I  want  to  be  dissipated,  but " 

"Dissipated  ?"    echoed  Mr.  Wilmot,  raising  his  eyebrows. 

"Well,  5'ou  know  what  I  mean,"  blushed  Michael. 

"Dissipation  is  a  condition  of  extreme  old  age.  I  might 
be  dissipated,  not  you,"  said  Mr.  Wilmot.  "Why  not  say 
wanton?  How  much  more  beautiful,  how  much  more 
intense  a  word." 

"But  wanton  sounds  so  beastly  affected,"  said  Michael. 
"As  if  it  was  taken  out  of  the  Bible.  And  you  aren't  so 
very  old.     Not  more  than  thirty." 

"I  think  what  you're  trying  to  say  is  that,  under  your 
present  mode  of  life,  you  find  self-expression  impossible. 
Let  me  diagnose  your  symptoms." 

Michael  leaned  forward  eagerly  at  this  proposal.  Noth- 
ing was  so  entertaining  to  his  egoism  just  now  as  diagnosis. 
Moreover,  Mr.  Wilmot  seemed  inclined  to  take  him  more 
seriously  than  Mr.  Viner,  or,  indeed,  any  of  his  spiritual 
directors  so  far.  Mr.  Wilmot  prepared  himself  for  the 
lecture  by  lighting  a  very  long  cigarette  wrapped  in  brittle 
fawn-colored  paper,  whose  spirals  of  smoke  Michael  fol- 
lowed upward  to  their  ultimate  evanescence,  as  if  indeed 
they  typified  with  their  tenuous  plumes  and  convolutions 
the  intricate  discourse  that  begot  them. 

"In  a  sense,  my  dear  bo)^  your  charm  has  waned — the 
faerie  charm,  that  is,  which  wraps  in  heedless  silver  armor 
the  perfect  boyhood  of  man.  You  are  at  present  a  queer 
sort  of  mythical  animal  whom  wx  for  want  of  a  better 
term  call  'adolescent.'  Intercourse  with  anything  but 
your  own  self  shocks  both  you  and  the  world  with  a  sense 
of  extravagance,  as  if  a  centaur  pursued  a  nymph  or  fought 


292  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

with  a  hero.  The  soul — or  what  we  call  the  soul — is 
struggling  in  the  bondage  of  your  unformed  body.  Lately 
you  had  no  soul,  you  were  ethereal  and  cold,  yet  withal 
in  some  remote  way  passionate,  like  your  own  boy's  voice. 
Now  the  silly  sun  is  melting  the  snow,  and  what  was  a 
little  while  since  crystalline  clear  virginity  is  beginning  to 
trickle  down  toward  a  headlong  course,  carrying  with  it 
the  soiled  accumulation  of  the  years  to  float  significantly 
into  the  wide  river  of  manhood.  But  I  am  really  being 
almost  intolerably  allegorical — or  is  it  metaphorical?" 

"Still,  I  think  I  understand  what  you  mean,"  Michael 
said  encouragingly. 

"Thrown  back  upon  your  own  resources,  it  is  not  sur- 
prising that  you  attempt  to  allay  your  own  sense  of  your 
own  incongruity  by  seeking  for  its  analogy  in  the  decorative 
excitements  of  religion  or  poetry.  Love  would  supply  the 
solution,  but  you  are  still  too  immature  for  love.  And  if 
you  do  fall  in  love  you  will  sigh  for  some  ample  and  un- 
attainable matron  rather  than  the  slim,  shy  girl  that  would 
better  become  your  pastoral  graces.  At  present  you  lack 
all  sense  of  proportion.  You  are  only  aware  of  your  awk- 
wardness. Your  corners  have  not  yet  been,  as  they  say, 
knocked  off.  You  are  still  somewhat  proud  of  their  Gothic 
angularity.  You  feel  at  home  in  the  tropic  dawns  of 
Swinburne's  poetry,  in  the  ceremonious  exaggerations  of 
Mass,  because  neither  of  these  conditions  of  thought  and 
behavior  allow  you  to  become  depressed  over  your  oddity, 
to  see  yourself  crawling  with  bedraggled  wings  from  the 
cocoon  of  mechanical  education.  The  licentious  ingenuity 
of  Martial,  Petronius  and  Apuleius  with  their  nightmare 
comedies  and  obscene  phantasmagoria,  Lucian,  that  boule- 
vardier  of  Olympic  glades,  all  these  could  allow  you  to  feel 
yourself  more  at  home  than  does  Virgil  with  his  peaceful 
hexameters  or  the  cold,  relentless  narrations  of  Thucy- 
dides." 


THE    YELLOW   AGE 293 

'*Yes,  that's  all  very  well,"  objected  Michael.  "But 
other  chaps  seem  to  get  on  all  right  without  being  bored 
by  ordinary  things." 

"Already  spurning  the  gifts  of  Apollo,  contemptuous  of 
Artemis,  ignorant  of  Bacchus  and  Aphrodite,  you  are  bent 
low  before  Pallas  Athene.  Foolish  child,  do  not  pray  for 
wisdom  in  this  overwise,  thin-faced  time  of  ours.  Rather 
demand  of  the  gods  folly,  and  drive  ever  furiously  your 
temperament  like  a  chariot  before  you." 

"I  met  an  odd  sort  of  chap  the  other  day,"  Michael 
said  thoughtfully.  "A  monk  he  was,  as  a  matter  of  fact — 
who  told  me  a  skit  of  things — you  know — about  a  bad  life. 
It's  funny,  though  I  hate  ugly  things  and  common  things, 
he  gave  me  a  feeling  that  Fd  like  to  go  right  away  from 
everything  and  live  in  one  of  those  horrible  streets  that 
you  pass  in  an  omnibus  when  the  main  road  is  up.  Per- 
haps you  don't  understand  w^hat  I  mean?" 

Mr.  Wilmot's  eyes  glittered  through  the  haze  of  smoke. 

"Why  shouldn't  I  understand?  Squalor  is  the  Parthen- 
ope  of  the  true  Romantic.  You'll  find  it  in  all  the  poets 
you  love  best — if  not  in  their  poetry,  certainly  in  their 
lives.  Even  romantic  critics  are  not  without  temptation. 
One  day  you  shall  read  of  Hazlitt  and  Sainte-Beuve.  And 
now,  dear  boy,  here  is  my  library,  which  holds  as  many 
secrets  as  the  Spintrian  books  of  Elephantis,  long  ago  lost 
and  purified  by  the  sea.  I  am  what  the  wise  world  would 
call  about  to  corrupt  your  mind,  and  yet  I  believe  that,  for 
one  who  like  you  must  some  day  make  trial  of  the  utter- 
most corruption,  I  am  prescribing  more  wisely  than 
Chiron,  the  pig-headed  or  rather  horse-bodied  old  proto- 
type of  all  schoolmasters^  who  sent  his  hero  pupils  one  after 
another  into  the  world,  proof  against  nothing  but  a  few 
spear-thrusts.  I  offer  you  better  than  fencing-bouts  and 
wrestling  matches.  I  offer  you  a  good  library.  Read  every 
day  and  all  night  and,  when  you  are  a  man  full  grown, 


294  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

you  will  smile  at  the  excesses  of  your  contemporaries,  at 
their  divorces  and  disgraces.  You  will  stand  aloof  like  a 
second  Aurelius,  coining  austere  aphorisms  and  mocking 
the  weakness  of  your  unlearned  fellows.  Why  are  priests 
generally  so  inept  in  the  confessional?  Because  they  learn 
their  knowledge  of  life  from  a  frowsy  volume  of  Moral 
Theology  that,  in  the  most  utterly  barbarous  Latin,  emits 
an  abstract  of  humanity's  immeasurable  vice.  In  the  same 
w^ay  most  young  men  encounter  wickedness  in  some  sudden 
shock  of  depravity  from  which  they  retire  blushing  and 
mumbling,  'Who'd  have  thought  it.'  'Who'd  have  thought 
it,'  they  cry,  and  are  immediately  empaneled  on  a  jury. 

"Not  so  you,  O  more  subtle  youth,  with  the  large,  deep 
eyes  and  secret,  sidelong  smile. 

"There  on  my  shelves  are  all  the  ages.  I  have  spoken 
to  you  of  Petronius,  of  Lucian  and  Apuleius.  There  is 
Suetonius,  with  his  incredibly  improper  tales  that  show 
how  beastliness  takes  root  and  flowers  from  the  deposited 
muck  of  a  gossip's  mind.  There  is  Tacitus,  ever  willing 
to  sacrifice  decency  to  antithesis,  and  Ausonius,  whose 
ribald  verses  are  like  monkish  recreation;  yet  he  had  withal 
a  pretty  currency  of  honest  silver  Latin,  Christian  though 
he  was.  You  must  read  your  Latin  authors  well,  for, 
since  you  must  be  decadent,  it  is  better  to  decay  from  a 
good  source.  And  neglect  not  the  Middle  Ages.  You  will 
glide  most  easily  into  them  from  the  witches  and  robbers 
of  Apuleius.  You  will  read  Boccaccio,  w^hose  tales  are 
intaglios  carved  with  exquisitely  licentious  and  Lilliputian 
scenes.  Neither  forget  Villon,  whose  light  ladies  seem  ever 
to  move  elusively  in  close-cut  gowns  of  cloth-of-gold  and 
incredibly  tall  steeple-hats.  But  even  with  Villon  the  world 
becomes  complicated,  and  you  will  soon  reach  the  tempera- 
mental entanglements  of  the  nineteenth  century,  for  you 
may  avoid  the  coarse,  the  beery  and  besotted  obviousness 
of  the  Georgian  age. 


THE    YELLOW   AGE 295 

"But  I  like  the  eighteenth  century  almost  best  of  all," 
protested  Michael. 

"Then  cure  yourself  of  that  most  lamentable  and  most 
demode  taste,  or  I  shall  presently  believe  that  you  read 
a  page  or  two  of  Boswell's  Life  of  Johnson  every  morning, 
vv^hile  the  w^ater  is  running  into  your  bath.  You  can  never 
be  a  true  decadent,  treading  delicately  over  the  garnered 
perfection  of  the  v^orld's  art,  if  you  really  admire  and  enjoy 
the  eighteenth  century." 

Michael,  hov^^ever,  looked  very  doubtful  over  his  de- 
manded apostasy. 

"But,  never  mind,"  Mr.  Wilmot  went  on.  "When  you 
have  read  Barbey  d'Aurevilly  and  Baudelaire,  Mallarme, 
Verlaine,  CatuUe  Mendes  and  Verhaeren,  when  the  Par- 
nassians and  Symbolists  have  illuminated  you,  and  you 
become  an  Interior  person,  when  Aubrey  Beardsley  and 
Ferdinand  Rops  have  printed  their  fierce  debauchery  upon 
your  imagination,  then  you  will  be  glad  you  have  forsaken 
the  eighteenth  century.  How  crude  is  the  actual  number 
eighteen,  how  far  from  the  passionate  mystery  of  seventeen 
or  the  tired  wisdom  of  nineteen!  O  wonderful  nineteenth 
century,  in  whose  gray  humid  dusk  you  and  I  are  lucky 
enough  to  live!" 

"But  what  about  the  twentieth  century?"  asked  Michael. 

Mr.  Wilmot  started. 

"Listen,  and  I  will  tell  you  my  intention.  Two  more 
years  have  yet  to  run  before  that  garish  and  hideous  date, 
prophetic  of  all  that  is  bright  and  new  and  abominably  raw. 
But  I  shall  have  fled,  how  I  know  not;  haply  mandragora 
will  lure  my  weary  mind  to  rest.  I  think  I  should  like  to 
die  as  La  Gioconda  was  painted,  listening  to  flute-players 
in  a  curtained  alcove;  or  you,  Michael,  shall  read  to  me 
some  diabolic  and  funereal  song  of  Baudelaire,  so  that  I 
may  fearfully  pass  away." 

Michael,  sitting  in  the  dim  room  of  peacock-bliie  made 


296  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

tremendously  nocturnal  by  the  heavy  smoke  of  all  the 
cigarettes,  did  not  much  care  for  the  turn  the  conversation 
of  Mr.  Wilmot  had  taken.  It  had  been  interesting  enough, 
w^hile  the  discussion  applied  directly  to  himself;  but  all 
this  vague  effusion  of  learning  meant  very  little  to  him. 
At  the  same  time,  there  v^as  an  undeniable  eccentricity  in 
a  member  of  the  Upper  Fifth  sitting  thus  in  fantastic 
communion  with  a  figure  completely  outside  the  imagina- 
tion of  Mr.  Cray  or  any  of  his  inky  groundlings.  Michael 
began  to  feel  a  contemptuous  pity  for  his  fellows  now 
buried  in  bedclothes,  hot  and  heavy  with  Ciceronian  sen- 
tences and  pious  preparation.  He  began  to  believe  that  if 
he  wished  to  keep  pace  with  this  new  friendship  he  must 
acquire  something  of  Mr.  Wilmot's  heightened  air.  And, 
however  mad  he  might  seem,  there  stood  the  books,  and 
there  stood  the  cigarettes  for  Michael's  pleasure.  It  was 
all  very  exciting,  and  it  would  not  have  been  possible  to 
say  that  before  he  met  Wilmot. 

The  friendship  progressed  through  the  rest  of  the 
autumn  term,  and  Michael  drifted  farther  away  from  the 
normal  life  of  the  school  than  even  his  incursion  into 
Catholicism  had  taken  him.  That  phase  of  his  development 
had  penetrated  deeper  than  any  other,  and  from  time  to 
time  Michael  knew  bitter  repentances  and  made  grim  reso- 
lutions. From  time  to  time  letters  would  arrive  from  Dom 
Cuthbert  asking  him  down  to  Clere  Abbey;  Mr.  Viner, 
too,  would  question  him  narrowly  about  his  new  set  of 
friends,  and  Michael's  replies  never  seemed  perfectly  satis- 
factory to  the  shrewd  priest. 

It  was  by  his  costume  more  than  by  anything  else  that 
Michael  expressed  at  first  his  sense  of  emancipation.  He 
took  to  coming  to  school  in  vivid  bow-ties  that  raised  Mr. 
Cray's  most  sarcastic  comments. 

"The  sooner  you  go  to  the  History  Sixth,  Fane,  and  take 
that   loathsome    ribbon   with   you,    the   better    for    us    all. 


THE    YELLOW    AGE  297 

Where  did  you  get  it?  Out  of  the  housemaid's  trunk, 
one  would  sa)',  by  its  appearance." 

"It  happens  to  be  a  tie,"  said  Michael  with  insolence  in 
his  tone. 

"Oh,  it  happens  to  be  a  tie,  does  it?  Well,  it  also  hap- 
pens to  be  an  excellent  rule  of  St.  James'  School  that  all 
boys,  however  clever,  wear  dark  suits  and  black  ties.  There 
also  happens  to  be  an  excellent  cure  for  pretentious  and 
flamboyant  youths  who  disregard  this  rule.  There  happens 
to  be  a  play  by  one  Euripides  called  the  Alcestis.  I  suggest 
you  write  me  out  the  first  two  hundred  lines  of  it." 

Michael's  next  encounter  was  with  Mr.  Viner,  on  the 
occasion  of  his  producing  in  the  priest's  pipe-seasoned  sitting- 
room  a  handkerchief  inordinately  perfumed  with  an  East- 
ern scent  lately  discovered  by  Wilmot. 

"Good  heavens,  Michael,  what  Piccadilly  breezes  are 
you  wafting  into  my  respectable  and  sacerdotal  apartment?" 

"I  rather  like  scent,"  explained  Michael  lamely. 

"Well,  I  don't,  so,  for  goodness'  sake,  don't  bring  any 
more  of  it  in  here.  Pah !  Phew !  It's  worse  than  a  Lenten 
address  at  a  fashionable  church.  Really,  you  know,  these 
people  you're  in  with  now  are  not  at  all  good  for  you, 
Michael." 

"They're  more  interesting  than  any  of  the  chaps  at 
school." 

"Are  they?  There  used  to  be  a  saying  in  my  under- 
graduate days,  'Distrust  a  freshman  that's  always  seen  with 
third-year  men.'  No  doubt  the  inference  is  often  unjust, 
but  still  the  proverb  remains." 

"Ah,  but  these  people  aren't  at  school  with  me,"  Michael 
observed. 

"No,  I  wish  they  were.  They  might  be  licked  into 
better  shape  if  they  were,"  retorted  the  priest. 

"I  think  you're  awfully  down  on  Wilmot  just  because 
20 


298  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

I  didn't  meet  him  in  some  church  set.  If  it  comes  to  that, 
I  met  some  much  bigger  rotters  than  him  at  Clere." 

*'My  dear  Michael,"  argued  Father  Viner,  "the  last 
place  I  should  have  been  surprised  to  see  Master  Wilmot 
would  be  in  a  churchy  set.  Don't  forget  that,  if  religion 
is  a  saving  grace,  religiosity  is  a  constitutional  weakness. 
Can't  you  understand  that  a  priest  like  myself,  who  has 
taken  the  average  course,  public-school,  'varsity,  and  theo- 
logical college,  meets  a  thundering  lot  of  Wilmots  by  the 
way?  My  dear  fellow,  many  of  my  best  friends,  many  of 
the  priests  you've  met  in  my  rooms,  were  once  upon  a  time 
every  bit  as  decadent  as  the  lilified  Wilmot.  They  took 
it  like  scarlet  fever  or  chicken-pox,  and  feel  all  the  more 
secure  now  for  having  had  it.  Decadence,  as  our  friend 
knows  it,  is  only  a  new-fangled  name  for  green-sickness. 
It's  a  healthy  enough  mental  condition  for  the  young,  but 
it's  confoundedly  dangerous  for  the  grown-up.  The  first 
pretty  girl  that  looks  his  way  cures  it  in  a  boy,  if  he's  a 
normal  decent  boy.  I  shouldn't  offer  any  objection  to  your 
behavior  if  you  were  being  decadent  with  Mark  Chator 
or  Martindale  or  Rigg.  Good  heavens,  the  senior  curate 
at  the  best  East-end  Mission  when  he  was  at  Oxford  used 
to  walk  down  the  High  leading  a  lobster  on  a  silver  chain, 
and  even  that  wasn't  original,  for  he  stole  the  poor  little 
fantastic  idea  from  some  precious  French  poet.  But  that 
senior  curate  is  a  very  fine  fellow  to-day.  No,  no,  this 
fellow  Wilmot  and  all  his  set  are  very  bad  company  for 
you,  and  I  do  not  like  your  being  decadent  with  these  half- 
baked  fancy  cakes." 

Michael,  however,  would  not  admit  that  Mr.  Viner  was 
right,  and  frequented  the  dangerous  peacock-blue  room  in 
Edwardes  Square  more  than  ever.  He  took  Chator  there 
among  others,  and  was  immensely  gratified  to  be  solemnly 
warned  at  the  end  of  the  visit  that  he  was  playing  with 
hell-fire.     This  seemed  to  him  an  interesting  and  original 


THE    YELLOW    AGE  299 

pastime,  and  he  hinted  to  solemn,  simple,  spluttering  old 
Chator  of  more  truly  Satanic  mysteries. 

After  Christmas  Michael  had  his  way  and  was  moved 
into  the  History  Sixth,  mainly  owing  to  the  intervention 
of  the  Member  for  West  Kensington.  The  History  Sixth 
was  presided  over  by  Mr.  Kirkham,  whose  nominal  aim  in 
life  was  the  amelioration  of  Jacobean  athletics.  From  the 
fact  that  he  wore  an  M.C.C.  ribbon  round  his  straw  hat, 
and  an  Oxford  University  Authentic  tie,  it  is  probable 
that  the  legend  of  his  former  skill  at  cricket  was  justified. 
In  reality  he  was  much  more  interested  in  Liberalism  than 
anything  else,  and  persistently  read  Blue  Books,  underlining 
the  dramatic  moments  of  Royal  Commissions  and  chewing 
his  mustache  through  pages  of  dialog  hostile  to  his  opin- 
ions. A  rumor  sped  round  the  school  that  he  had  been 
invited  to  stand  for  Parliament,  a  rumor  which  Michael, 
on  the  strength  of  dining  with  the  Member  for  West  Ken- 
sington, flatly  contradicted. 

The  History  Sixth  class-room  was  a  pleasant  place,  the 
only  class-room  in  the  school  that  ever  saw  the  sun.  Its 
windows  looked  out  on  the  great  green  expanse  of  the 
school  ground,  where  during  the  deserted  hours  of  work 
the  solitary  roller  moved  sedately  and  ancient  women 
weeded  the  pitches. 

There  were  only  seven  boys  in  the  History  Sixth.  There 
was  Strang,  the  Captain  of  the  Eleven,  who  lounged 
through  the  dull  Lent  term  and  seemed,  as  he  spread  his 
bulk  over  the  small  desk,  like  a  half-finished  statue  to 
which  still  adhered  a  fragment  of  uncarved  stone.  There 
was  Terry,  the  Vice-Captain  of  the  Fifteen,  and  most 
dapper  half-back  that  ever  cursed  forwards.  He  spent  his 
time  trying  to  persuade  Strang  to  take  an  interest  in 
Noughts  and  Crosses.  There  was  beak-nosed  Thomson, 
who  had  gained  an  Exhibition  at  Selwyn  College,  Cam- 
bridge, and  red-haired  Mallock,  w^hose  father  wTote  colum- 


300  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

nar  letters  to  The  Times.  Burnaby,  who  shocked  ]\Iichael 
very  much  by  prophesying  that  a  certain  H.  G.  Wells,  now 
writing  about  Martian  invasions,  was  the  coming  man,  and 
Railton,  a  weedy  and  disconsolate  recluse,  made  up  with 
Michael  himself  the  class  list. 

There  was  an  atmosphere  of  rest  about  the  History 
Sixth,  a  leisured  dignity  that  contrasted  very  delightfully 
with  the  spectacled  industry  of  the  Upper  Fifth.  To  begin 
with,  Mr.  Kirkham  was  always  ten  minutes  after  every 
other  master  in  entering  his  class-room.  This  habit  allowed 
the  members  of  his  form  to  stroll  gracefully  along  the 
corridors  and  watch  one  by  one  the  cavernous  doors  of 
other  class-rooms  absorb  their  victims.  Michael  would  often 
go  out  of  his  way  to  pass  Mr.  Cray's  room  in  order  to  see 
with  a  luxurious  sense  of  relief  the  intellectual  convicts  of 
the  Upper  Fifth  hurrying  to  their  prison.  Many  other 
conventions  of  school  life  were  slackened  in  the  History 
Sixth.  A  slight  eccentricity  of  attire  was  not  considered 
unbecoming  in  what  was,  at  any  rate  in  its  own  opinion, 
a  faintly  literary  society.  The  room  was  always  open  be- 
tween morning  and  afternoon  school,  and  it  was  not  an 
uncommon  sight  to  see  members  of  the  form  reading  novels 
in  tip-tilted  chairs.  Most  of  the  home  work  was  set  a 
week  in  advance,  which  did  away  with  the  unpleasant 
necessity  of  speculating  on  the  "construe"  or  hurriedly 
cribbing  with  a  hastily  peppered  variety  of  mistakes  the 
composition  of  one's  neighbor.  Much  of  the  work  was 
simple  reading,  and  as  for  the  essays,  by  a  legal  fiction 
they  were  always  written  during  the  three  hours  devoted 
to  Mathematics.  Tradition  forbade  any  member  of  the 
History  Sixth  to  take  Mathematics  seriously,  and  Mr. 
Gaskell,  the  overw^orked  Mathematical  master,  was  not 
inclined  to  break  this  tradition.  He  used  to  wTite  out  a 
problem  or  two  on  the  blackboard  for  the  sake  of  appear- 
ances, and  then  settle  down  to  the  correction  of  his  more 


THE    YELLOW    AGE 301 

serious  pupils'  work,  while  the  History  Sixth  devoted  them- 
selves to  their  more  serious  work.  One  of  the  great  social 
earthquakes  that  occasionally  devastate  all  precedent  oc- 
curred when  Mr.  Gaskell  was  away  with  influenza,  and 
his  substitute,  an  earnest  )^oung  novice,  tried  to  make 
Strang  and  Terry  do  a  quadratic  equation. 

**But,  sir,  we  never  do  Mathematics." 

"Well,  what  are  you  here  for?"  asked  the  novice. 
"What  am  /  here  for?" 

"We  don't  know,"  replied  the  History  Sixth  in  unison; 
and  the  vendetta  that  followed  the  complaint  of  their 
behavior  to  Mr.  Kirkham  made  the  novice's  mastership 
a  burden  to  him  during  Mr.  Gaskell's  illness.  Enraged 
conservatism  called  for  reprisals,  until  Mr.  Kirkham 
pointed  out,  with  a  felicity  acquired  from  long  perusal  of 
Parliamentary  humor,  "You  are  Jacobeans,  not  Jacobins," 
and  with  this  mild  joke  quenched  the  feud. 

The  effect  of  his  transference  to  the  History  Sixth  made 
Michael  more  decadent  than  ever,  for  the  atmosphere  of 
his  new  class  encouraged  him  along  the  orchidaceous  path 
pointed  out  by  Arthur  Wilmot.  He  was  not  now  decadent 
from  any  feeling  of  opposition  to  established  things,  but 
he  was  decadent  from  conviction  of  the  inherent  rightness 
of  such  a  state.  At  first  the  phase  had  manifested  itself 
in  outward  signs,  a  little  absurdly;  now  his  actual  point 
of  view  was  veering  into   accord  with  the  externals. 

Sunday  was  a  day  at  Edwardes  Square,  from  which 
Michael  returned  almost  phosphorescent  with  decay.  Sun- 
day was  the  day  on  which  Mr.  Wilmot  gathered  from  all 
over  London  specimens  of  corruption  that  fascinated 
Michael  with  their  exotic  and  elaborate  behavior.  Nothing 
seemed  worth  while  in  such  an  assembly  except  a  novel 
affectation.  Everything  was  a  pose.  It  was  a  pose  to  be 
effeminate  in  speech  and  gesture;  it  was  a  pose  to  drink 
absinthe;    it  was   a  pose  to  worship  the  devil;    it  was  a 


302  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

pose  to  buy  attenuated  volumes  of  verse  at  an  unnatural 
price,  for  the  sake  of  owning  a  sonnet  that  was  left  out 
in  the  ordinary  edition;  it  was  a  pose  to  admire  pictures 
that  to  Michael  at  first  were  more  like  wall  papers  than 
pictures;  it  w^as  really  a  pose  to  live  at  all.  Conversation 
at  these  delicate  entertainm.ents  was  like  the  conversations 
overheard  in  the  anterooms  of  private  asylums.  Everyone 
was  very  willowy  in  his  movements,  whether  he  were 
smoking  or  drinking  or  looking  for  a  box  of  matches. 
Michael  attempted  to  be  willowy  at  school  once,  but  gave 
it  up  on  being  asked  if  he  had  fleas. 

One  of  the  main  charms  at  first  of  these  Sunday  after- 
noon gatherings  was  the  way  in  which,  one  after  another, 
every  one  of  the  guests  would  take  Michael  aside  and  ex- 
plain how  different  he  (the  guest)  was  from  all  the  rest 
of  humanity.  Michael  was  flattered,  and  used  to  become 
very  intense  and  look  very  soul-searching,  and  interject 
sympathetic  exclamations  until  he  discovered  that  the  con- 
fidant usually  proceeded  to  another  corner  of  the  room  to 
entrust  someone  else  with  his  innermost  heart.  He  became 
cynical  after  a  while,  especially  when  he  found  that  the 
principal  points  of  difference  from  the  rest  of  the  world 
were  identical  in  every  one  of  the  numerous  guests  who 
sought  his  counsel  and  his  sympathy. 

However,  he  never  became  cynical  enough  to  distrust 
the  whole  school  of  thought  and  admit  that  Father  Viner's 
contempt  was  justifiable.  If  ever  he  had  any  doubts,  he 
was  consoled  by  assuring  himself  that  at  any  rate  these 
new  friends  were  very  artistic,  and  how  important  it  was 
to  be  artistic  no  one  could  realize  who  was  not  at  school. 

Under  the  pressure  of  his  insistent  temperament,  Michael 
found  his  collection  of  statuettes  and  ecclesiastical  bric-a- 
brac  very  depressing.  As  a  youth  of  the  Florentine  Renais- 
sance he  could  not  congratulate  himself  upon  his  room, 
which  w^as  much  too  much  unlike  either  a  Carpaccio  in- 


THE    YELLOW   AGE  303 


terior  or   an  Aubrey  Beardsley  bedroom.     Between   these 
two  his  ambition  wavered. 

One  by  one  the  statuettes  were  moved  to  the  top  of  a 
wardrobe  where  for  a  while  they  huddled,  a  dusty  and 
devoted  crowd,  until  one  by  one  they  met  martyrdom  at 
the  hands  of  the  housemaid.  In  their  place  appeared  Delia 
Robbia  reliefs  and  terra-cotta  statuettes  of  this  or  that 
famous  Greek  youth.  The  muscular  and  tearful  pictures 
of  Guido  Reni,  the  bland  insipidities  of  Bougereau  soon 
followed  the  statuettes,  meeting  a  comparable  martyrdom 
by  being  hung  in  the  servants'  bedroom.  The  walls  of 
Michael's  room  were  papered  with  a  brown  paper,  which 
was  intended  to  be  very  artistic,  but  was  really  merely  sad. 
It  was  lightened,  however,  by  various  daring  pictures  in 
black  and  red  that,  after  only  a  very  short  regard,  really 
did  take  shape  as  scenes  of  Montmartre.  There  were  land- 
scapes of  the  Sussex  downs,  with  a  slight  atmosphere  of 
Japan  and  landscapes  of  Japan  that  were  not  at  all  like 
Japan,  but  none  the  less  beautiful  for  that.  The  books 
of  devotion  were  banished  to  the  company  of  superannuated 
Latin  and  Greek  text-books  on  the  lower  shelf  of  a  cup- 
board in  the  morning-room,  whose  upper  shelf  was  stacked 
with  tinned  fruits.  Incense  was  still  burnt,  not  as  once  to 
induce  prayers  to  ascend,  but  to  stupefy  Michael  with 
scent  and  warmth  into  an  imitation  of  a  drug-taker's  list- 
less paradise.  This  condition  was  accentuated  by  erecting 
over  the  head  of  his  bed  a  canopy  of  faded  green  satin, 
which  gave  him  acute  aesthetic  pleasure,  until  one  night 
it  collapsed  upon  him  in  the  middle  of  the  night.  Every 
piece  of  upholstery  in  the  room  was  covered  with  art  linens 
that  with  the  marching  years  had  ousted  the  art  muslins 
of  Michael's  childhood.  He  also  covered  with  squares  of 
the  same  material  the  gas  brackets,  pushing  them  back 
against  the  wall  and  relying  for  light  upon  candles  only. 
Notwithstanding  Wilmot's  talk  about  literature,  the  influ- 


304  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

ence  of  Wilmot's  friends  was  too  strong,  and  Michael 
could  not  resist  the  deckle-edges  of  negligible  poets.  As 
these  were  expensive,  Michael's  library  lacked  scope,  and 
he  himself,  reflecting  his  pastime,  came  to  believe  in  the 
bitterness  and  sweetness  and  bitter-sweetness  of  the  plaint- 
ive sinners  who  printed  so  elegantly  on  such  permanent 
paper  the  versification  of   their  irregularity. 

Irregularity  was  now  being  subjected  to  Michael's 
process  of  idealistic  alchemy,  and  since  his  conception  of 
irregularity  was  essentially  romantic,  and  since  he  shrank 
from  sentiment,  he  was  able  to  save  himself,  when  pres- 
ently all  this  decoration  fell  to  pieces  and  revealed  naked 
unpleasantness.  Nothing  in  his  present  phase  had  yet 
moved  him  so  actually  as  his  brief  encounter  with  Brother 
Aloysius.  That  glimpse  of  a  fearful  and  vital  underworld 
had  been  to  him  romantic  without  trappings;  it  was  a 
glimpse  into  an  underworld  to  which  one  day  he  might 
descend,  since  it  asked  no  sighing  for  the  vanished  joys  of 
the  past,  for  the  rose-gardens  of  Rome.  He  began  to  play 
with  the  idea  of  departing  suddenly  from  his  present  life 
and  entering  the  spectral  reality  of  the  Seven  Sisters  Road, 
treading  whatever  rafl[ish  raddled  pavement  knew  the  hol- 
low steps  of  a  city's  prowlers.  Going  home  on  Sunday 
nights  from  the  perfumed  house  in  Edwardes  Square  and 
passing  quickly  and  apprehensively  figures  that  materialized 
in  a  circle  of  lamplight,  he  would  contrast  their  existence 
with  what  remained  in  his  senses  of  stale  cigarette  smoke 
and  self-conscious  airs  and  attitudes.  Yet  the  very  picture 
he  conjured  of  the  possibility  that  haunted  him  made  him 
the  more  anxious  to  substitute  for  the  stark  descent  to  hell 
the  Sicilian  or  Satanic  affectations  of  the  luxurious  mimes 
who  postured  against  a  background  of  art.  Much  of  the 
talk  at  Edwardes  Square  concerned  itself  with  the  pastoral 
side  of  school  life,  and  Michael  found  himself  being  cross- 
questioned  by  elderly  faun-like  men  who  had  a  conception 


THE    YELLOW    AGE 305 

of  an  English  public  school  that  was  more  oriental  than 
correct.  Michael  vainly  tried  to  dispel  these  illusions, 
which  made  him  resentful  and,  for  the  moment,  crudely 
normal.  He  felt  toward  them  much  as  he  felt  toward 
Garrod's  attempt  to  cure  his  ignorance  at  Clere.  These 
were  excellent  fellows  from  whom  to  accept  a  cigarette  or 
sometimes  even  an  invitation  to  lunch  at  a  Soho  restaurant, 
but  when  they  presumed  upon  his  condescension  and  dared 
to  Include  in  their  tainted  outlook  himself  as  a  personal 
factor,   Michael  shriveled  with  a  virginal  disdain. 

Unreasonably  to  the  others,  Michael  did  not  object  very 
much  to  Wilmot's  oracular  addresses  on  the  delights  of 
youth.  He  felt  that  so  much  of  Wllmot  was  in  the  mere 
word,  and  he  admired  so  frankly  his  embroideries  of  any 
subject,  and,  above  all,  he  liked  Wilmot  so  much  person- 
ally that  he  listened  to  him,  and  was  even  so  far  Influenced 
by  him  as  to  try  to  read  into  the  commonplace  of  a  summer 
term  all  that  Wilmot  would  suggest. 

"O  fortunate  shepherd,  to  whom  will  you  pipe  to-mor- 
row, or  what  slim  and  agile  companion  will  you  crown  for 
his  prowess?  O  lucky  youth,  able  to  drowse  in  the  tem- 
pered sunlight  that  the  elm  trees  give,  while  your  friend 
splendidly  cool  in  his  white  flannels  bats  and  bowls  for 
your  delight." 

"But  I  haven't  got  any  particular  friend  that  I  can 
watch,"  objected  Michael. 

"One  day  you  will  terribly  regret  the  privileges  of  your 
pastoral  life." 

"Do  you  really  think  I  am  not  getting  all  I  can  out  of 
school?"    demanded  Michael. 

"I'm  sure  you're  not,"  said  Wilmot. 

Michael  began  to  trouble  himself  over  Wilmot's  warning, 
and  also  he  began  to  look  back  with  sentimental  regret  to 
what  had  really  been  his  happiest  time,  his  friendship  with 
Alan.    Pride  kept  him  from  approaching  Alan  with  nothing 


3o6  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

to  offer  for  nearly  two  years'  indifference.  There  had 
been  no  quarrel.  They  had  merely  gradually  drifted  apart, 
yet  it  was  with  a  deep  pang  of  remorse  that  one  day  he 
realized  in  passing  the  dusty  Upper  Fifth  that  Alan  w^as 
now  wrestling  with  that  imprisonment.  Michael  racked 
his  brains  to  think  of  some  way  by  which  he  and  Alan 
might  come  together  in  their  old  amity,  their  perfect  fellow- 
ship. He  sought  some  way  that  would  make  it  natural 
and  inevitable,  but  no  way  presented  itself.  He  could,  so 
deep  was  his  sudden  regret,  have  stifled  his  ow^n  pride  and 
deliberately  invited  Alan  to  be  friends;  he  would  even 
have  risked  a  repulse;  but  with  the  renewal  of  his  longing 
for  the  friendship  came  a  renewal  of  the  old  sympathy 
and  utter  comprehension  of  Alan's  most  secret  moods, 
and  Michael  realized  that  his  old  friend  would  be  too 
shy  to  accept  this  strange,  inexplicable  revival,  unless  it 
were  renewed  as  it  was  begun  by  careless,  artless  inter- 
course. 

The  immediate  result  of  this  looking  back  to  an  earlier 
period  was  to  arouse  in  Michael  an  interest  in  boys  younger 
than  himself,  and  through  his  idealism  to  endow  them  with 
a  conscious  joy  of  life  which  he  fell  to  envying.  He  had  a 
desire  to  warn  them  of  the  enchantment  under  whose  benign 
and  dulcet  influence  they  lived,  to  warn  them  that  soon  the 
lovely  spell  would  be  broken,  and  bid  them  make  the  most 
of  their  stripling  time.  Continually  he  was  seeing  boys  in 
the  lower  forms  whose  friendship,  blooming  like  two  flowers 
on  a  spray,  shed  a  fragrance  so  poignant  that  tears  came 
springing  to  his  eyes.  He  began  to  imagine  himself  very 
old,  to  feel  that  by  some  unkind  gift  of  temperament  he 
had  nothing  left  to  live  for.  It  chanced  that  summer  term 
the  History  Sixth  learned  for  repetition  the  Odes  of  KeatSi 
and  in  the  Ode  on  a  Grecian  Urn  Michael  found  the  ex- 
pression of  his  mood: 


THE    YELLOW    AGE 307 

Fair  youth,  beneath  the  trees,  thou  canst  not  leave 
Thy  song,  nor  ever  can  those  trees  be  bare; 
Bold  Lover,  never,  never  canst  thou  kiss, 
Though  winning  near  the  goal — yet,  do  not  grieve; 
She  cannot  fade,  though  thou  hast  not  thy  bliss, 
Forever  w^ilt  thou  love,  and  she  be  fair! 

These  lines  were  learnt  in  June,  and  for  Michael  they 
enshrined  immortally  his  yearning.  Never  had  the  fugitive 
summer  glided  so  fast,  since  never  before  had  he  sat  in  con- 
templation of  its  flight.  Until  this  moment  he  had  been 
one  with  the  season's  joy  like  a  bird  or  a  sunbeam,  but  now 
for  the  first  time  he  had  the  opportunity  of  regarding  the 
empty  field  during  the  hours  of  school,  and  of  populating 
it  with  the  merry  ghosts  of  the  year  with  Caryll.  All 
through  schooltime  the  mowing  machine  hummed  its  low 
harmony  of  perishable  minutes  and  wasted  sunlight.  The 
green  field  was  scattered  with  the  wickets  of  games  in 
progress  that  stood  luminously  in  golden  trios,  so  brightly 
did  the  sunny  weather  enhance  their  wood.  The  scoring- 
board  of  the  principal  match  stared  like  a  stopped  clock 
with  the  record  of  the  last  breathless  run,  and,  as  if  to 
mock  the  stillness,  from  a  distant  corner  came  a  sound  of 
batting,  where  at  the  nets  the  two  professionals  practiced 
idly.  A  bluebottle  buzzed  upon  the  window-pane;  pigeons 
flapped  from  pinnacle  to  pinnacle  of  the  chapel;  sparrows 
cheeped  on  a  persistent  note;  pens  scratched  paper;  Mr. 
Kirkham  turned  a  Blue  Book's  page  at  regular  intervals. 

Ah,  happy,  happy  boughs!    that  cannot  shed 
Your  leaves,  nor  ever  bid  the  Spring  adieu; 
And,  happy  melodist,   unwearied 
Forever  piping  songs  forever  new. 

Thus  for  him  would  the  tranced  scene  forever  survive. 

The  History  Sixth  were  for  the  purposes  of  cricket  linked 
to  the  Classical   Lower   Sixth,   but   Michael   did   not  play 


3o8  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

•that  term.  Instead,  a  strayed  reveler,  he  would  move 
from  game  to  game  of  the  Junior  School,  hearing  the  shrill 
encouragement  and  pondering  the  rose-red  agility  of  a 
Classical  lower  form,  in  triumph  over  minor  Moderns. 
Michael  was  continually  trying  to  perceive  successors  to 
himself  and  Alan,  and  he  would  often  enter  into  shy  col- 
loquy with  the  juniors,  who  were  awed  by  his  solemn 
smile,  and  shuffled  uneasily  from  leg  to  leg. 

Two  boys,  whom  Michael  finally  determined  should 
stand  as  types  of  Alan  and  him,  gradually  emerged  from 
the  w^hite  throng  of  Lower  School  cricket.  One  of  them 
was  indeed  very  like  Alan,  and  had  the  same  freckled  smile. 
With  this  pair  Michael  became  intimate,  as  one  becomes 
intimate  with  two  puppies.  He  would  pet  and  scold  them, 
encourage  them  to  be  successful  in  their  sport,  and  rebuke 
them  for  failure.  They  perhaps  found  him  entertaining, 
and  were  certainly  proud  to  be  seen  in  conversation  with 
him,  for,  though  Michael  himself  was  not  an  athletic  hero, 
he  was  the  companion  of  heroes,  and  round  him  clung  the 
shining  mirage  of  their  immortality. 

Then  one  day,  unknown  to  Michael,  these  two  boys  be- 
came involved  in  a  scandal ;  the  inquisition  of  a  great  public 
school  pinned  them  down  desperately  struggling,  miserably 
afraid;  the  rumor  of  their  expulsion  went  callously  round 
the  gossiping  ranks  of  their  fellows.  Michael  was  informed 
of  their  disgrace  by  red-haired  Mallock,  whose  father  wrote 
columnar  letters  to  The  Times.  Michael  said  bitter  things 
to  the  complacent  Mallock  and  offered,  with  serious  want 
of  dignity  for  a  member  of  the  leisurely  and  cultivated 
History  Sixth,  to  punch  Mallock's  damned  red  head. 

Mallock  said  sneeringly  that  he  supposed  Michael  sym- 
pathized with  the  little  beasts.  Michael  replied  that  he 
merely  sympathized  with  them  because  he  was  profoundly 
sure  that  it  was  a  pack  of  lies. 


THE    YELLOW   AGE 309 

"You'd  better  go  and  tell  the  Old  Man  that,  because 
they  say  he's  going  to  expel  them  to-day." 

Michael  turned  pale  with  fury. 

"I  damned  well  will  go,  and  when  I  come  back  I'll  ram 
you  upside  down  in  the  tuckshop  butter-tub." 

Mallock  flushed  under  the  ignominy  of  this  threat,  and 
muttered  his  conviction  that  Michael  was  talking  through 
his  hat.  Just  then  Mr.  Kirkham  entered  the  class-room, 
and  Michael  immediately  went  up  to  him  and  asked  if  he 
might  go  and  speak  to  the  Headmaster. 

Mr.  Kirkham  stared  with  amazement,  and  his  voice, 
which  always  seemed  to  hesitate  whether  it  should  come 
out  through  his  mouth  or  his  nose,  on  this  occasion  never 
came  out  at  all,  but  stayed  in  the  roof  of  Mr.  Kirkham's 
mouth. 

"Can  I,  sir?"    Michael  repeated. 

"I  suppose  you  can,"  said  Mr.  Kirkham. 

The  class  followed  Michael's  exit  with  wide  eyes;  even 
the  phlegmatic  Strang  was  so  deeply  moved  that  he  sat 
upright  in  his  chair  and  tapped  his  head  to  indicate  mid- 
summer madness. 

Outside  in  the  echoing  corridor,  where  the  plaster  casts 
looked  coldly  down,  Michael  wrestled  with  his  leaping 
heart,  forcing  it  into  tranquillity  so  that  he  could  grapple 
with  the  situation  he  had  created  for  himself.  By  the 
Laocoon  he  paused.  Immediately  beyond  was  the  somber 
doorway  of  the  Head's  room.  As  he  paused  on  the 
threshold  two  ridiculous  thoughts  came  to  him — that  Less- 
ing's  Laocoon  was  one  of  the  set  books,  and  that  he  would 
rather  be  struggling  in  the  coils  of  that  huge  stone  snake 
than  standing  thus  invertebrate  before  this  portentous 
door. 

Then  Michael  tapped.  There  was  no  answer  but  a  dull 
buzz  of  voices.  Again  Michael  tapped  and,  beating  down 
his  heart,  turned  the  handle  that  seemed,  as  he  held  it,  to 


310  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

swell  to  pumpkin  size  in  his  grasp.  Slowly  he  pushed  the 
door  before  him,  expecting  to  hear  a  bellowed  summons  to 
appear,  and  wondering  whether  he  could  escape  unknown 
to  his  class-room  if  his  nerve  failed  him  even  now.  Then  he 
heard  the  sound  of  tears,  and  indignation  drove  him  on- 
ward, drove  him  so  urgently  that  actually  he  slammed  the 
great  door  behind  him,  and  made  the  intent  company  aware 
of  his  presence. 

"What  do  you  want?"  shouted  Dr.  Brownjohn.  "Can't 
you  see  I'm  busy?" 

"I  want  to  speak  to  you,  sir."  The  words  actually 
seemed  to  come  from  his  mouth  winged  with  flames,  such 
a  volcano  was  Michael  now. 

"I'm  busy.  Go  outside  and  wait,"  roared  the  Head- 
master. 

Michael  paused  to  regard  the  scene — the  two  boys  sob- 
bing with  painful,  regular  intake  of  breath,  oblivious  of 
him;  the  witnesses,  a  sheepish  crew;  the  school  porter 
waiting  for  his  prey;  old  Mr.  Caryll  coughing  nervously 
and  apparently  on  the  verge  of  tears  himself;  the  odious 
Paul  Pry  of  a  Secretary  nibbling  his  pen;  and,  in  the  back- 
ground, other  masters  waiting  with  favorable  or  damning 
testimony. 

The  drama  of  gloating  authority  shook  Michael  to  the 
very  foundation  of  his  being,  and  he  came  rapidly  into  the 
middle  of  the  room,  came  right  up  to  the  Headmaster, 
until  he  felt  engulfed  in  the  black  silk  gown,  and  at  last 
said  slowly  and  with  simple  conviction: 

"I   think  you're  all  making  a  mistake." 

When  he  had  spoken  Michael  could  have  kicked  himself 
for  not  shouting  furiously  the  torrid  denunciations  which 
had  come  surging  up  for  utterance.  Then  he  immediately 
began  to  talk  again,  to  his  own  great  surprise,  calmly  and 
very  reasonably. 

"I    know    these    kids — these    two    boys — I    mean — quite 


THE    YELLOW    AGE  311 

well.  It's  impossible  for  any  of  this  to  be  true.  I've  seen 
them  a  lot  this  term — practically  every  day.  Really,  sir, 
you'll  make  a  terrible  mistake  if  you  expel  them.  They're 
aw^fuUy  decent  little  chaps.  They  are  really,  sir.  Of 
course  they're  too  frightened  now  to  say  anything  for  them- 
selves. It's  not  fair  for  everybody  to  be  set  at  them  like 
this." 

Michael  looked  despairingly  at  the  masters  assembled. 

"And  these  other  boys  who've  been  brought  in  to  tell 
what  they  know.  Why,  they're  frightened,  too.  They'd 
say  anything.     Why  don't  you,  why  don't  you " 

Michael  looked  round  in  despair,  stammered,  broke 
down,  and  then,  to  his  own  eternal  chagrin,  burst  into 
tears.  He  moved  hastily  over  to  the  window,  striving  to 
pull  himself  together,  seeing  through  an  overpowering  blur 
the  great  green  field  in  the  garish  sunlight.  Yet  his  tears, 
shameful  to  him,  may  have  turned  the  scale,  for  one  by 
one  the  masters  came  forward  with  eager  testimony  of 
good;  and  with  every  word  of  praise  the  tears  rushed  faster 
and  faster  to  Michael's  eyes.  Then  he  heard  old  Caryll's 
rasping  cough  and  broken,  benignant  sentences,  which,  with 
all  their  memories,  lulled  his  emotion  to  quietude  again. 

"Hope  you'll  bring  it  in  non  prohatum.  Headmaster" — 
cough — cough — "good  boys  both" — cough — cough — "sure 
it's  a  mistake — Fane's  a  good  boy,  too — idle  young  rascal — 
but  a  good  heart" — cough — cough — "had  him  under  me  for 
a  year — know  him  well " 

Dr.  Brownjohn,  with  a  most  voluminous  wave,  dismissed 
the  matter.  Everyone,  even  the  Paul  Pry  of  a  Secretary, 
went  out  of  the  room,  and,  as  the  door  closed,  Michael 
heard   Mr.  Caryll   addressing  the  victims. 

"Now  then,  don't  cry  any  more,  you  young  boobies." 

Michael's  thoughts  followed  them  upstairs  to  the  jolly 
class-room,  and  he  almost  smiled  at  the  imagination  of  Mr. 
Caryll's  entrance  and  the  multitudinous  jokes  that  would 


312  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

demonstrate  his  relief  at  his  pupils'  rescue.  Michael  recov- 
ered from  his  dream  to  find  the  Headmaster  speaking  to 
him  in  his  most  rumbling  bass. 

"I  don't  know  why  I  allowed  you  to  interfere  in  this 
disgraceful   affair,   boy.     Um?" 

"No,  sir,"  Michael  agreed. 

"But,  since  you  are  here,  I  will  take  the  opportunity  of 
warning  you  that  the  company  you  keep  is  very  vile." 

Michael  looked  apprehensive. 

"If  you  think  nothing  is  known  of  your  habits  out  of 
school,  you  are  much  mistaken.  I  will  not  have  any  boy 
at  my  school  frequenting  the  house  of  that  deboshed  nin- 
compoop Wllmot." 

Dr.  Brownjohn's  voice  was  now  so  deep  that  it  vibrated 
in  the  pit  of  Michael's  stomach  like  the  diapason  of  the 
school  organ. 

"Give  up  that  detestable  association  of  mental  impostors 
and  be  a  boy  again.  You  have  disappointed  me  during  the 
whole  of  your  career;  but  you're  a  winning  boy.  Um? 
Go  back  to  your  work." 

Michael  left  the  august  room  with  resolves  swaying  in 
his  brain,  wondering  what  he  could  do  to  repay  the  Old 
Man.  It  was  too  late  to  take  a  very  high  place  in  the 
summer  examinations.  Yet  somehow,  so  passionate  was  his 
gratitude,   he  managed  to  come  out  third. 

Michael  never  told  his  mother  about  his  adventure,  but 
in  the  reaction  against  Wllmot  and  all  that  partook  of 
decadence,  and  in  his  pleasure  at  having  done  something, 
however  clumsily,  he  felt  a  great  wish  to  include  his  mother 
in  his  emotion  of  universal  love. 

"Where  are  we  going  these  holidays?"    he  asked. 

"I  thought  perhaps  you'd  like  to  stay  at  your  monastery 
again,"  said  Mrs.  Fane.     "I  was  thinking  of  going  abroad." 

Michael's  face  fell,  and  his  mother  was  solicitously 
penitent. 


THE    YELLOW    AGE  313 

"My  dearest  boy,  I  never  dreamed  you  would  want  to 
be  with  me.     You've  always  gone  out  on  Sundays." 

*'I  know,  I'm  sorry,  I  won't  again,"  Michael  assured 
her. 

''And  I've  made  my  arrangements  now.  I  wish  I'd 
known.  But  why  shouldn't  you  go  and  see  Stella?  It 
seems  a  pity  that  you  and  she  should  grow  up  so  much 
apart." 

"Well,  I  will,  if  you  like,"  said  Michael. 

"Dearest  boy,  what  has  happened  to  you?  You  are  so 
agreeable, "^  exclaimed  Mrs.   Fane. 

In  the  end  it  w^as  arranged  that  Michael  should  accom- 
pany Mr.  Viner  on  his  holiday  in  France,  and  afterwards 
stay  with  Stella  with  a  family  at  Compiegne  for  the  rest 
of  the  time.  Michael  went  to  see  his  mother  off  at  Charing 
Cross  before  he  joined  Mr.  Viner. 

"Darling  Michael,"  she  murmured,  as  the  train  began 
to  move  slowly  forward.  "You're  looking  so  well  and 
happy — just  like  you  were  two  years  ago.     Just  like " 

The  rest  of  the  comparison  was  lost  in  the  noise  of  the 
speeding  train. 


21 


CHAPTER  X 
STELLA 

MICHAEL  spent  a  charming  fortnight  with  Father 
VIner  in  Amiens,  Chartres  and  Rouen.  The 
early  Masses  to  which  they  went  along  the  cool, 
empty  streets  of  the  morning,  and  the  shadowy,  candle-lit 
Benedictions  from  which  they  came  home  through  the 
deepening  dusk,  gave  to  Michael  at  least  a  profound  hope, 
if  not  the  astonishing  faith  of  his  first  religious  experience. 
Sitting  with  the  priest  at  the  open  window  of  their  inn, 
while  down  below  the  footsteps  of  the  wayfarers  were  pat- 
tering like  leaves,  Michael  recaptured  some  of  that  emotion 
of  universal  love  which,  with  sacramental  force,  had  filled 
his  heart  during  the  wonder  of  transition  from  boyhood  to 
adolescence.  He  did  not  wish  to  know  more  about  these 
people  than  could  be  told  by  the  sound  of  their  progress  so 
light,  so  casual,  so  essentially  becoming  to  the  sapphirine 
small  world  in  which  they  hurried  to  and  fro.  The  passion 
of  hope  overwhelmed  Michael's  imagination  with  a  beauty 
that  was  perfectly  expressed  by  the  unseen  busy  populations 
of  a  city's  waning  twilight.  Love,  birth,  death,  greed,  am- 
bition, all  humanity's  stress  of  thought  and  effort  were 
merged  in  a  murmurous  contentment  of  footfalls  and  faint- 
heard  voices.  Michael  supposed  that  somehow  to  God  the 
universe  must  sound  much  as  this  tall  street  of  Rouen 
sounded  now  to  him  at  his  inn  window,  and  he  realized 
for  the  first  time  how  God  must  love  the  world.     Later, 

314 


STELLA  31  s 


the  twilight  and  voices  and  footfalls  would  fade  together 
into  night,  and  through  long  star-scattered  silences  Michael 
would  brood  with  a  rapture  that  became  more  than  hope, 
if  less  than  faith  with  restless,  fiery  heart.  Then  clocks 
would  strike  sonorously;  the  golden  window-panes  would 
waver  and  expire;  Mr.  Viner  would  tap  his  pipe  upon  the 
sill,  and  Michael  and  he  would  follow  their  own  great 
shadows  up  into  bedrooms  noisy  in  the  night-wind  and 
prophetic  of  sleep's  immense  freedom,  until  with  the  slant- 
ing beams  of  dawn  Michael  would  wake  and  at  Mass-time 
seek  to  enchain  with  prayers  indomitable  dreams. 

The  gravity  of  Michael's  demeanor  suited  the  gray  town 
in  which  he  sojourned  and,  though  Mr.  Viner  used  to  tease 
him  about  his  saintly  exterior,  the  priest  seemed  to  enjoy 
his  company. 

"But  don't  look  so  solemn  when  you  meet  your  sister, 
or  she'll  think  you're  sighing  for  a  niche  in  Chartres  Cathe- 
dral, which  for  a  young  lady  emancipated  from  Germany 
would  be  a  most  distressing  thought." 

"I'm  enjoying  myself,"  said  Michael  earnestly. 

"My  dear  old  chap,  I'm  not  questioning  that  for  a 
moment,  and  personally  I  find  your  attitude  consorts  very 
admirably  with  the  mood  in  which  these  northern  towns 
of  France  always  throw  me,"  said  Mr.  Viner. 

The  fortnight  came  to  an  end,  and  to  commemorate 
this  chastening  interlude  of  a  confidence  and  a  calm  w^hose 
impermanence  Michael  half  dreaded,  half  desired,  he 
bought  a  pair  of  old  candlesticks  for  the  Notting  Dale 
Mission.  Michael  derived  a  tremendous  consolation  from 
this  purchase,  for  he  felt  that,  even  if  in  the  future  he 
should  be  powerless  to  revive  this  healing  time,  its  austere 
hours  would  be  immortalized,  mirrored  somehow  in  the 
candlesticks'  bases  as  durably  as  if  engraved  upon  a  Grecian 
urn.     There  was  in  this  impulse  nothing  more  sentimental 


3i6  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

than  in  his  erecting  last  year  of  the  small  cairn  to  cele- 
brate a  fleeting  moment  of  faith  on  the  Berkshire  downs. 

Stella  was  already  settled  in  the  bosom  of  the  French 
family  when  Michael  reached  Compiegne,  and  as  he  drove 
toward  the  Pension  he  began  for  the  first  time  to  wonder 
what  his  sister  would  be  like  after  these  tw^o  years.  He 
was  inclined  to  suppose  that  she  would  be  a  problem, 
and  he  already  felt  qualms  about  the  behavior  of  her 
projected  suddenly  like  this  from  Germany  into  an  atmos- 
phere of  romance.  For  Michael  France  always  stood 
out  as  typically  romantic  to  his  fancy.  Spain  and  Italy 
were  not  within  his  realization  as  yet,  and  Germany  he 
conceived  of  as  a  series  of  towns  filled  with  the  noise  of 
piano-scales  and  hoarse  gutturals.  He  hoped  that  Stella 
was  not  even  now  plunged  into  a  girlish  love-affair  with 
one  of  the  idle  young  Frenchmen  who  haunted  so  amorously 
the  sunshine  of  this  gay  land.  He  even  began  to  rehearse, 
as  his  carriage  jolted  along  the  cobbled  embankm.ent  of  the 
Oise,  a  particularly  scathing  scene  in  which  he  coldly  de- 
nounced the  importunate  lover,  while  Stella  stood  abashed 
by  fraternal  indignation.  Then  he  reflected  that  after  all 
Stella  was  only  fifteen  and,  as  he  remembered  her,  too 
much  wrapped  up  in  a  zest  for  public  appreciation  to  be 
very  susceptible  of  private  admiration.  Moreover,  he  knew 
that  most  of  her  time  was  occupied  by  piano-practice.  An 
emotion  of  pride  in  his  accomplished  sister  displaced  the 
pessimism  of  his  first  thoughts.  He  took  pleasure  in  the 
imagination  of  her  swaying  the  whole  Pension  by  her 
miraculous  execution,  and  he  began  to  build  up  the  picture 
of  his  entrance  upon  the  last  crashing  chords  of  a  sonata, 
when  after  the  applause  had  ceased  he  would  modestly 
step  forward  as  the  brother  of  this  paragon. 

The  carriage  was  now  bowling  comfortably  along  a  wide 
tree-shaded  avenue  bordered  on  either  side  by  stretches 
of  greenery  which  were  dappled  with  children  and  nurse- 


STELLA  317 


maids  and  sedate  little  girls  with  bobbing  pigtails.  Michael 
wondered  if  Stella  was  making  a  discreet  promenade  with 
the  ladies  of  the  family,  half  hoped  she  was,  that  he  might 
reach  the  Pension  before  her  and  gracefully  welcome  her 
as  she,  somewhat  flustered  by  being  late  for  his  arrival, 
hurried  up  the  front-door  steps.  Then,  just  as  he  was 
wondering  whether  there  would  or  would  not  be  front- 
door steps  to  the  Pension,  the  cab  drew  up  by  a  house 
with  a  green  verandah  and  front-garden  geranium-dyed 
to  right  and  left  of  a  vivid  gravel  path.  Michael  perceived, 
with  a  certain  disapproval,  that  the  verandah  sheltered 
various  ladies  in  wicker  chairs.  He  disliked  the  notion  of 
carrying  up  his  bag  in  the  range  of  their  cool  criticism, 
nor  did  he  relish  the  conversation  that  would  have  to  be 
embarked  upon  with  the  neat  maid  already  hurrying  to 
meet  him.  But  most  contrary  to  his  preconceived  idea  of 
arrival  was  the  affectionate  ambush  laid  for  him  by  Stella 
just  when  he  was  trying  to  remember  whether  '^chambre" 
were  masculine  or  feminine.  Yet,  even  as  he  felt  Stella's 
dewy  lips  on  his,  and  her  slim  fingers  round  his  neck,  he 
reproached  himself  for  his  silly  shyness,  although  he  could 
only  say: 

"Hullo,  look  out  for  my  collar." 

Stella  laughed  rippingly. 

'*Oh,  Michael,"  she  cried,  "I'm  most  frightfully  glad 
to  see  3'ou,  you  darling  old  Michael." 

Michael  looked  much  alarmed  at  the  amazing  facility 
of  her  affectionate  greeting,  and  vaguely  thought  how  much 
easier  existence  must  be  to  a  girl  who  never  seemed  to  be 
hampered  by  any  feeling  of  what  people  within  earshot 
would  think  of  her.  Yet  almost  immediately  Stella  herself 
relapsed  into  shyness  at  the  prospect  of  introducing 
Michael  to  the  family,  and  it  was  only  the  perfectly  accom- 
plished courtesy  of  Madame  Regnier  which  saved  Michael 


3i8  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

from  summarily  making  up  his  mind  that  these  holidays 
were  going  to  be  a  most  ghastly  failure. 

The  business  of  unpacking  composed  his  feelings  slightly, 
and  a  tap  at  his  door,  followed  by  Stella's  silvery  demand 
to  come  in,  gave  him  a  thrill  of  companionship.  He  sud- 
denly realized,  too,  that  he  and  his  sister  had  corresponded 
frequently  during  their  absence,  and  that  this  queer  shy- 
ness at  meeting  her  in  person  was  really  absurd.  Stella, 
wandering  round  the  room  with  his  ties  on  her  arm,  gave 
Michael  real  pleasure,  and  she  for  her  part  seemed  highly 
delighted  at  the  privilege  of  superintending  his  unpacking. 

He  noted  with  a  sentimental  fondness  that  she  still 
hummed,  and  he  was  very  much  impressed  by  the  flowers 
which  she  had  arranged  in  the  cool  corners  of  the  pleasant 
room.  On  her  appearance,  too,  as  she  hung  over  the  rail 
of  his  bed  chatting  to  him  gaily,  he  congratulated  himself. 
He  liked  the  big  apple-green  bows  in  her  chestnut  hair; 
he  liked  her  slim  white  hands  and  large  eyes;  and  he  won- 
dered if  her  smile  were  like  his,  and  hoped  it  was,  since  it 
was  certainly  very  subtle  and  attractive. 

"What  sort  of  people  hang  out  in  this  place?"  he  asked. 

"Oh,  nice  people,"  Stella  assured  him.  "Madame 
Regnier  is  a  darling,  and  she  loves  my  playing,  and  Mon- 
sieur is  fearfully  nice,  with  a  gray  beard.  We  always  play 
billiards  in  the  evening,  and  drink  cassis.  It's  lovely. 
There  are  three  darling  old  ladies,  widows  I  think.  They 
sit  and  listen  to  me  playing,  and  when  IVe  finished  pay 
me  all  sorts  of  compliments,  which  sound  so  pretty  in 
French.     One  of  them  said  I  was  'ravissante.'  " 

"Are  there  any  kids?"  asked  Michael. 

Stella  said  there  were  no  kids,  and  Michael  sighed  his 
relief. 

"Do  you  practice  much?" 

"Oh,  no,  I'm  having  a  holiday.  I  only  practice  three 
hours  a  day." 


STELLA  319 


"How  much?"  asked  Michael.  "Good  lord,  do  you 
call    that   a   holiday?" 

"Why,  you  silly  old  thing,  of  course  it  is,"  rippled 
Stella. 

Presently  it  was  time  for  dejeuner,  and  they  sat  down  to 
eat  in  a  room  of  shaded  sunlight,  watching  the  green 
jalousies  that  glowed  like  beryls,  and  listening  to  a  canary's 
song.  Michael  was  introduced  to  Madame  Graves, 
Madame  Lamarque  and  Madame  Charpentier,  the  three 
old  widows  who  lived  at  the  Pension,  and  who  all  looked 
strangely  alike,  with  their  faces  and  hands  of  aged  ivory 
and  their  ruffles  and  wristbands  starched  to  the  semblance 
of  fretted  white  coral.  They  ate  mincingly  in  contrast  to 
Monsieur  Regnier,  who,  guarded  by  a  very  large  napkin, 
pitchforked  his  food  into  his  mouth  with  noisy  recklessness. 
Later  in  the  mellow  August  afternoon  Michael  and  he 
walked  solemnly  round  the  town  together,  and  Michael 
wondered  if  he  had  ever  before  raised  his  hat  so  many 
times. 

After  dinner,  when  the  coffee  and  cassis  had  been  drunk, 
Madame  Regnier  invited  Stella  to  play  to  them.  Dusk 
was  falling  in  the  florid  French  drawing-room,  but  so  rich 
was  the  approach  of  darkness  that  no  lamps  brooded  with 
rosy  orbs,  and  only  a  lighted  candle  on  either  side  of  Stella 
stabbed  the  gloom  in  which  the  listeners  leaned  quietly 
back  against  the  tropic  tapestries  of  their  chairs,  without 
trying  to  occupy  themselves  with  books  or  crochet-work. 

Michael  sat  by  the  scented  window,  watching  the  stars 
twinkle,  it  almost  seemed,  in  tune  with  the  vibrant  melodies 
that  Stella  rang  out.  In  the  bewitching  candlelight  the 
keyboard  trembled  and  shimmered  like  water  to  a  low 
wind.  Deep  in  the  shadow  the  three  old  ladies  sat  in  a 
waxen  ecstasy,  so  still  that  Michael  wondered  whether 
they  were  alive.  He  did  not  know  whose  tunes  they  were 
that   Stella   played;   he   did    not   know   what    dreams    they 


320  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

wove  for  the  old  ladies,  whether  of  spangled  opera-house 
or  ball;  he  did  not  care,  being  content  to  watch  the 
lissome  hands  that  from  time  to  time  went  dancing  away 
on  either  side  from  the  curve  of  Stella's  straight  back, 
whether  to  play  with  raindrops  in  the  treble  or  marshal 
thunders  from  the  bass.  The  candlelight  sprayed  her  flow- 
ing chestnut  hair  with  a  golden  mist  that  might  have  been 
an  aureole  over  which  the  apple-green  bows  floated  unsub- 
stantial like  amazing  moths. 

Michael  continually  tried  to  shape  his  ideas  to  the  in- 
spiration of  the  music,  but  every  image  that  rose  battling 
for  expression  lost  itself  in  a  peerless  stupefaction. 

Then  suddenly  Stella  stopped  playing  and  the  enchant- 
ment was  dispelled  by  murmurous  praise  and  entering 
lamplight.  Stella,  slim  as  a  fountain,  stood  upright  in 
the  center  of  the  drawing-room,  and,  like  a  fountain, 
swayed  now  this  way,  now  that,  to  catch  the  compliments 
so  dear  to  her.  Michael  wished  the  three  old  ladies  would 
not  appeal  to  him  to  indorse  their  so  perfectly  phrased 
enthusiasm,  and  grew  very  conscious  of  the  gradual  decline 
of  "oui"  into  "we"  as  he  supported  their  laudation.  He 
w^as  glad  when  Monsieur  Regnier  proposed  a  game  of 
billiards,  and  glad  to  see  that  Stella  could  romp,  romp  so 
heartily  indeed  that  once  or  twice  he  had  to  check  a  whis- 
pered rebuke. 

But  later  on,  when  he  said  good  night  to  her  outside 
his  bedroom,  he  had  an  impulse  to  hug  her  close  for  the 
unimaginable  artistry  of  this  little  sister. 

Michael  and  Stella  went  out  next  day  to  explore  the 
forest  of  Compiegne.  They  wandered  away  from  the 
geometrical  forest  roads  into  high  glades  and  noble  chases; 
they  speculated  upon  the  whereabouts  of  the  wild  boars 
that  were  hunted  often,  and  therefore  really  did  exist; 
they  lay  deep  in  the  bracken  utterly  remote  in  the  ardent 
emerald  light,   utterly  quiet  save  for  the  thrum  of   insects 


STELLA  321 


rising  and  falling.  In  this  intimate  seclusion  Michael 
found  it  easy  enough  to  talk  to  Stella.  Somehow  her 
face,  magnified  by  the  proportions  of  the  surrounding 
vegetation,  scarcely  seemed  to  belong  to  her,  and  Michael 
had  a  sensation  of  a  fairy  fellowship,  as  he  felt  himself 
being  absorbed  into  her  wide  and  strangely  magical  eyes. 
Seen  like  this  they  were  as  overwhelmingly  beautiful  as 
two  flowers,  holding  mysteries  of  color  and  form  that  could 
never  be  revealed  save  thus  in  an  abandonment  of  con- 
templation. 

"Why  do  you  stare  at  me,  Michael?"  she  asked. 
"Because  I  think  it's  funny  to  realize  that  you  and  I 
are  as  nearly  as  it's  possible  to  be  the  same  person,  and  yet 
we're  as  different  from  each  other  as  we  are  from  the  rest 
of  people.  I  wonder,  if  you  didn't  know  I  was  your 
brother,  and  I  didn't  know  you  were  my  sister,  if  we  should 
have  a  sort  of— what's  the  word ?— intuition  about  it?  For 
instance,  you  can  play  the  piano,  and  I  can't  even  under- 
stand the  feeling  of  being  able  to  play  the  piano.  I  wish 
we  knew  our  father.  It  must  be  interesting  to  have  a 
father  and  a  mother,  and  see  what  part  of  one  comes  from 

each." 

"I    always  think   father   and   mother  weren't   married," 

said  Stella. 

Michael  blushed  hotly,  taken  utterly  aback. 

"I  say,  my  dear  girl,  don't  say  things  like  that.  That's 
a  frightful  thing  to  say." 

"Why?" 

"Why?  Why,  because  people  would  be  horrified  to 
hear  a  little  girl  talking  like  that,"  Michael  explained. 

"Oh,  I  thought  you  meant  they'd  be  shocked  to  think 
of  people  not  being  married." 

"I  say,  really,  you  know,  Stella,  you  ought  to  be  careful. 
I  wouldn't  have  thought  you  even  knew  that  people  some- 
times—very seldom,  though,  mind— don't  get  married." 


322  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"You  funny  old  boy,"  rippled  Stella.  "You  must  think 
I'm  a  sort  of  doll  just  wound  up  to  play  the  piano.  If  I 
didn't  know  that  much  after  going  to  Germany,  why — 
oh,  Michael,   I  do  think  you're  funny." 

"I  was  afraid  these  beastly  foreigners  would  spoil  you," 
muttered  Michael. 

"It's  not  the  foreigners.     It's  myself." 

"Stella!" 

"Well,  I'm  fifteen  and  a  half." 

"I  thought  girls  were  innocent,"  said  Michael  with  dis- 
illusion in  his  tone. 

"Girls  grow  older  quicker  than  boys." 

"But  I  mean  always  innocent,"  persisted  Michael.  "I 
don't  mean  all  girls,  of  course.  But — well — a  girl  like 
you." 

^'Very  innocent  girls  are  usually  very  stupid  girls," 
Stella  asserted. 

Michael  made  a  resolution  to  watch  his  sister's  behavior 
when  she  came  back  to  London  next  year  to  make  her  first 
public  appearance  at  a  concert.  For  the  moment,  feeling 
overmatched,  he  changed  the  trend  of  his  reproof. 

"Well,  even  if  you  do  talk  about  people  not  being 
married,  I  think  it's  rotten  to  talk  about  mother  like  that." 

"You  stupid  old  thing,  as  if  I  should  do  it  with  anyone 
but  you,  and  I  only  talked  about  her  to  you  because  you 
look  so  sort  of  cozy  and  confidential  in  these  ferns." 

"They're  not  ferns — they're  bracken.  If  I  thought  such 
a  thing  was  possible,"  declared  Michael,  "I  believe  I'd  go 
mad.  I  don't  think  I  could  ever  again  speak  to  anybody 
I  knew." 

"Why  not,  if  they  didn't  know?" 

"How  like  a  girl!  Stella,  you  make  me  feel  uncomfort- 
able, you  do  really." 

Stella  stretched  her  full  length  in  the  luxurious  greenery. 

"Well,  mother  never  seems  unhappy." 


STELLA 3^ 

"Exactly,"  said  Michael  eagerly.  ''Therefore,  what  you 
think  can't  possibly  be  true.  If  it  were,  she'd  always  look 
miserable." 

'Well,  then  who  was  our   father?" 

"Don't  ask  me,"  said  Michael  gloomily.  "I  believe  he's 
in  prison — or  perhaps  he's  in  an  asylum,  or  deformed." 

Stella  shuddered. 

"Michael,  what  a  perfectly  horrible  idea.     Deformed!" 

"Well,  wouldn't  you  sooner  he  were  deformed  than  that 
you  were — than  that — than  the  other  idea?"  Michael  stam- 
mered. 

"No,  I  wouldn't,"  Stella  cried.  "I'd  much,  much,  much 
rather  that  mother  was  never  married." 

Michael  tried  to  drag  his  mind  toward  the  comprehen- 
sion of  this  unnatural  sentiment,  but  -the  longer  he  regarded 
it  the  worse  it  seemed,  and  with  intense  irony  he  observed 
to  Stella: 

"I  suppose  you'll  be  telling  me  next  that  you're  in  love." 

"I'm  not  in  love  just  at  the  moment,"  said  Stella  blandly. 

"Do  you  mean  to  say  you  have  been  in  love?" 

"A  good  deal,"  she  admitted. 

Michael  leaped  to  his  feet,  and  looked  down  on  her 
recumbent  in  the  bracken. 

"But  only  in  a  stupid  schoolgirly  way?"    he  gasped. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  it  was,"  Stella  paused.  "But  it  was 
fearfully  thrilling  all  the  same — especially  in  duets." 

"Duets?" 

"I  used  to  read  ahead,  and  watch  where  our  hands  would 
come  together,  and  then  the  notes  used  to  get  quite  slippery 
with  excitement." 

"Look  here,"  Michael  demanded,  drawing  himself  up, 
"are  you  trying  to  be  funny?" 

"No,"  Stella  declared,  rising  to  confront  Michael.  "He 
was  one  of  my  masters.  He  was  only  about  thirty,  and 
he  was  killed  in  Switzerland  by  an  avalanche." 


324  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Michael  was  staggered  by  the  confession  of  this  shocking 
and  precocious  child,  as  one  after  another  his  chimeras  rose 
up  to  leer  at  him  triumphantly. 

"And  did  he  make  love  to  you?  Did  he  try  to  kiss 
you?"  Michael  choked  out. 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Stella.     "That  would  have  spoilt  it  all." 

Michael  sighed  under  a  faint  lightening  of  his  load, 
and  Stella  came  up  to  him  engagingly  to  slip  her  arm  into 
his. 

"Don't  be  angry  with  me,  Michael,  because  I  have 
wanted  so  dreadfully  to  be  great  friends  with  you  and 
tell  you  all  my  secrets.  I  want  to  tell  you  what  I  think 
about  when  I'm  playing;  and,  Michael,  you  oughtn't  to 
be  angry  with  me,  because  you  were  simply  just  made  to 
be  told  secrets.  That's  why  I  played  so  well  last  night,  I 
was  telling  you  a  secret  all  the  time." 

"Do  you  know  what  it  is,  Stella?"  said  Michael  with 
a  certain  awe  in  his  voice.  "I  believe  our  father  is  in 
an  asylum,  and  I  believe  you  and  I  are  both  mad — not 
raving  mad,  of  course — but  slightly  mad." 

"All  geniuses  are,"  said  Stella  earnestly. 

"But  we  aren't  geniuses." 

"I  am,"  murmured  Stella  in  a  strangely  quiet  little 
voice  that  sounded  in  Michael's  ears  like  the  song  of  a 
furtive  melodious  bird. 

"Are  you?"  he  whispered,  half  frightened  by  this  asser- 
tion, delivered  under  huge  overarching  trees  in  the  burning 
silence  of  the  forest.     "Who  told  you  so?" 

"I  told  myself  so.  And  when  I  tell  myself  something 
very  solemnly,  I  can't  be  anything  but  myself,  and  I  must 
be  speaking  the  truth." 

"But  even  if  you're  a  genius — and  I  suppose  you  might 
be — I'm  not  a  genius.     I'm  clever,  but  I'm  not  a  genius." 

"No,  but  you're  the  nearest  person  to  being  me  and, 
if  you're  not  a  genius,  I  think  you  can  understand.     Oh, 


STELLA  325 


Michael,"  Stella  cried,  clasping  his  arm  to  her  heart,  "you 
do  understand,  because  you  never  laughed  when  I  told 
you  I  was  a  genius.  I've  told  lots  of  girl-friends,  and 
they  laugh  and  say  I'm  conceited." 

''Well,  you  are,"  said  Michael,  feeling  bound  not  to 
lose  the  opportunity  of  impressing  Stella  with  disapproval 
as  v/ell  as  comprehension. 

"I  know  I  am.  But  I  must  be  to  go  on  being  myself. 
Oh,  you  darling  brother,  you  do  understand  me.  I've 
longed  for  someone  to  understand  me.  Mother's  only 
proud  of  me." 

"I'm  not  at  all  proud  of  you,"  said  Michael  crushingly. 

"I  don't  want  you  to  be.  If  you  were  proud  of  me, 
you'd  think  I  belonged  to  you,  and  I  don't  ever  want  to 
belong  to  anybody." 

"I  shouldn't  think  you  ever  would,"  said  Michael 
encouragingly,  as  they  paced  the  sensuous  mossy  path  in  a 
rapture  of  avowals.  "I  should  think  you'd  frighten  any- 
body except  me.     But  why  do  you  fall  in  love,  then?" 

"Oh,  because  I  want  to  make  people  die  with  despair." 

"Great  Scott,  you  are  an  unearthly  kid." 

"Oh,  I'm  glad  I'm  unearthly,"  said  Stella.  "Fd  like 
to  be  a  sort  of  Undine.  I  think  I  am.  I  don't  think  I've 
got  a  soul,  because  when  I  play  I  go  rushing  out  into  the 
darkness  to  look  for  my  soul,  and  the  better  I  play  the 
nearer  I  get." 

Michael  stopped  beneath  an  oak-tree  and  surveyed  this 
extraordinary  sister  of  his. 

"Well,  I  always  thought  I  was  a  mystic,  but,  good  lord, 
you're  fifty  times  as  much  of  a  mystic  as  I  am,"  he  ex- 
claimed with  depressed  conviction. 

Suddenly  Stella  gave  a  loud  scream. 

"What  on  earth  are  you  yelling  at?"  said  Michael. 

"Oh,    Michael,    look — a    most    enormous    animal.      Oh, 


326  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

look,  oh,  let  me  get  up  a  tree.  Oh,  help  me  up.  Push 
me  up  this  tree." 

"It's  a  wild  boar,"  declared  Michael,  in  a  tone  of  aston- 
ished interest. 

Stella  screamed  louder  than  ever  and  clung  to  Michael, 
sobbing.  The  boar,  however,  went  on  its  way,  routing 
among  the  herbage. 

"Well,  you  may  be  a  genius,"  said  Michael,  "but  you're 
an  awful  little  funk." 

"But  I  was  frightened." 

"Wild  boars  aren't  dangerous  except  when  they're  being 
hunted,"  Michael  asserted  positively. 

Stella  soon  became  calm  under  the  influence  of  her 
brother's  equanimity.  Arm-in-arm  they  sauntered  back 
toward  Compiegne,  and  so  for  a  month  of  serene  weather 
they  sauntered  every  day,  and  every  day  Michael  pondered 
more  and  more  deeply  the  mystery  of  women.  He  was 
sorry  to  say  good-bye  to  Stella  when  she  w^ent  back  to 
Germany,  and  longed  for  the  breathless  hour  of  her  first 
concert,  wishful  that  all  his  life  he  might  stand  between 
her  and  the  world,  the  blundering  wild  boar  of  a  world. 


CHAPTER   XI 
ACTION   AND    REACTION 

ALMOST  before  the  confusion  of  a  new  term  had 
subsided,  Michael  put  his  name  down  to  play- 
football  again,  and  it  was  something  in  the  nature 
of  an  occasion  when  in  the  first  sweltering  Middle  Side 
game  he  scored  six  tries.  Already  his  contemporaries  had 
forgotten  that  he  was  once  a  fleet  and  promising  three- 
quarter,  so  that  his  resurrection  was  regarded  as  an  authen- 
tic apparition,  startling  in  its  unexpectedness.  Michael 
was  the  only  person  not  much  surprised  when  he  was  in- 
vited by  Abercrombie  to  play  as  substitute  for  one  of  the 
seniors  absent  from  a  Big  Side  trial.  Yet  even  Michael 
was  surprised  when  in  the  opening  match  between  Classics 
and  Moderns  he  read  his  name  on  the  notice-board  as 
sixteenth  man;  and  when,  through  the  continued  illness 
of  the  first  choice,  he  actually  found  himself  walking  on 
to  the  field  between  the  black  lines  of  spectators,  he  was 
greatly  content.  Yet  the  finest  thrill  of  all  came  when 
in  the  line-out  he  found  himself  on  the  left  wing  with  Alan, 
with  Alan  not  very  unlike  the  old  Alan  even  now  in  the 
coveted  Tyrian  vest  of  the  Classical  First  Fifteen. 

Into  that  game  Michael  poured  all  he  felt  of  savage 
detestation  for  everything  that  the  Modern  side  stood 
for.  Not  an  opponent  was  collared  that  did  not  in  his 
falling  agony  take  on  the  likeness  of  Percy  Garrod;  not 
a  Modern  half-back  was  hurled  into  touch  who  was  not  in 

327 


328  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Michael's  imagination  insolent  with  damnably  destructive 
theories  of  life.  It  was  exhilarating,  it  was  superb,  it  was 
ineffable,  the  joy  of  seeing  Alan  hand  off  a  Modern  bounder 
and  swing  the  ball  out  low  to  him  crouching  vigilantly  upon 
the  left.  It  was  intoxicating,  it  was  divine  to  catch  the 
ball,  and  with  zigzag  leap  and  plunge  to  tear  w^ildly  on 
toward  the  Modern  goal,  to  hear  the  Classical  lower  boys 
shriek  their  high-voiced  thrilling  exhortations,  to  hear  the 
maledictions  of  the  enemy  ricochetting  from  a  force  of 
speed  that  spun  its  own  stability.  Back  went  the  ball  to 
Alan,  shouting  with  flushed  face  on  his  right,  just  as  one 
of  the  Modern  three-quarters,  with  iron  grip  round 
Michael's  faltering  knees,  fetched  him  crashing  down. 

"Good  pass,"  cried  the  delighted  Classical  boys,  and 
'Well  run,  sir,  well  run,  sir !"  they  roared  as  Alan  whizzed 
the  ball  along  to  the  dapper,  the  elusive,  the  incomparable 
Terry.  "Go  in,  yourself,"  they  prayed,  as  Terry  like  a 
chamois  bounded  straight  at  the  despairing  full-back,  then, 
with  a  gasp  that  triumphed  over  the  vibrant  hush,  checked 
himself,  and  in  one  peerless  spring  breasted  the  shoulders 
of  the  back  to  come  thudding  down  upon  the  turf  with 
a  glorious  try. 

Now  the  game  swayed  desperately,  and  with  Alan  ever 
beside  him  Michael  lived  through  every  heroic  fight  of 
man.  They  were  at  Thermopylae,  stemming  the  Persian 
charges  with  hack  and  thrust  and  sweeping  cut;  they  were 
at  Platea  with  Aristides  and  Pausanias,  vowing  death 
rather  than  subjugation;  the  body  of  Terry  beneath  a 
weight  of  Modern  forwards,  crying,  "Let  me  up,  you 
stinkers!"  was  fought  for  as  long  ago  beneath  the  walls  of 
Troy  the  battle  raged  about  the  body  of  Patroclus.  And 
when  the  game  was  over,  when  the  Moderns  had  been 
defeated  for  the  first  time  in  four  resentful  years  of  scien- 
tific domination,  when  the  Classical  Fifteen  proudly  strode 
from  the  field,   immortal   in  muddied  Tyrian,  it  was  easy 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  329 

enough  to  walk  across  the  gravel  arm-in-arm  with  Alan 
and,  while  still  the  noise  of  the  contest  and  the  cries  of 
the  onlookers  echoed  in  their  ears,  it  was  easy  to  span  the 
icy  floes  of  two  drifting  years  in  one  moment  of  careless, 
artless   intercourse. 

"You'll  get  your  Second  Fifteen  colors,"  said  Alan  con- 
fidently. 

''Not  this  year,"  Michael  thought. 

"You'll  get  your  Third  Fifteen  cap  for  a  snip." 

"Yes,  I  ought  to  get  that,"  Michael  agreed. 

"Well,  that's  damned  good,  considering  you  haven't 
played  for  two  years,"  Alan  vowed.  " 

And,  as  he  spoke,  IVIichael  wondered  if  Alan  had  ever 
wished  for  his  company  in  the  many  stressful  games  from 
which  he  had   been  absent. 

Michael  now  became  one  of  that  group  of  happy  im- 
mortals in  the  entrance-hall,  whose  attitudes  of  noble  ease 
graced  the  hot-water  pipes  below  the  board  on  which 
the  news  of  the  school  fluctuated  daily.  This  society, 
to  which  nothing  gave  admission  but  a  profound  sense 
of  one's  own  right  to  enter  it,  -varied  from  time  to  time 
only  in  details.  As  a  whole  composition  it  was  immutable, 
as  permanent,  as  decorative  and  as  appropriate  as  the 
frieze  of  the  Parthenon.  From  twenty  minutes  past  nine 
until  twenty-seven  minutes  past  nine,  from  twenty-five 
minutes  past  eleven  until  twenty-eight  minutes  past  eleven, 
from  ten  minutes  to  three  until  two  minutes  to  three  the 
heroes  of  the  school  met  in  a  large  familiarity  whose 
Olympian  laughter  awed  the  fearful  small  boy  that  flitted 
uneasily  past  and  chilled  the  slouching  senior  that  rashly 
paused  to  examine  the  notices  in  assertion  of  an  unearned 
right.  Even  masters  entering  through  the  swinging  doors 
seemed  glad  to  pass  beyond  the  range  of  the  heroes'  patron- 
izing contemplation. 

Michael  found  a  pedestal  here,  and   soon  idealized  the 
22 


330  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

heedless  stupidity  of  these  immortals  into  a  Lacedemonian 
rigor  which  seemed  to  him  very  fine.  He  accepted  their 
unimaginative  standards,  their  coarseness,  their  brutality 
as  virtues,  and  in  them  he  saw  the  consummation  of  all 
that  England  should  cherish.  He  successfully  destroyed 
a  legend  that  he  was  clever,  and,  though  at  first  he  found 
ft  difficult  to  combat  the  suspicion  of  aesthetic  proclivities 
and  religious  eccentricity,  even  of  poetic  ambitions,  which 
overshadowed  his  first  welcome,  he  w^as  at  last  able  to  get 
these  condoned  as  a  blemish  upon  an  otherwise  diverting 
personality  with  a  tongue  nimble  enough  to  make  heroes 
guffaw.  Moreover,  he  was  a  friend  of  Alan,  w^ho  with 
his  slim  disdain  and  perfectly  stoic  bearing  was  irreproach- 
able, and  since  Michael  frankly  admired  his  new  friends, 
and  since  he  imparted  just  enough  fantasy  to  their  stolid 
fellowship  to  lend  it  a  faint  distinction,  he  was  very  soon 
allowed  to  preserve  a  flavor  of  oddity,  and  became  In  time 
arbiter  of  whatever  elegance  they  could  claim.  Michael 
on  his  side  was  most  anxious  to  conform  to  every  prejudice 
of  the  Olympians,  esteeming  their  stolidity  far  above  his 
own  natural  demeanor,  envious  too  of  their  profoundly  or- 
dinary point  of  view  and  their  commonplace  expression 
of    it. 

Upon  this  assembly  descended  the  news  of  war  with 
the  Transvaal,  and  for  three  months  at  least  Michael 
shared  in  the  febrile  elation  and  arrogance  and  complacent 
outlook  of  the  average  Englishman.  The  Olympians  re- 
called from  early  schooldays  the  forms  of  heroes  who  were 
•even  now  gazetted  to  regiments  on  their  way  to  the  front, 
and  who  but  a  little  while  ago  had  lounged  against  these 
very  hot-water  pipes.  Sandhurst  and  Woolwich  candidates 
lamented  their  ill-luck  in  being  born  too  young,  and  con- 
soled themselves  with  proclaiming  that  after  all  the  war 
was  so   easy  that   scarcely  were   they  missing   anything   at 


ACTION   AND    REACTION  331 

all.  Then  came  the  first  low  rumble  of  defeat,  the  first 
tremulous  breath  of  doubt. 

Word  went  round  that  meetings  were  being  held  to 
stop  the  war,  and  wrathfully  the  heroes  mounted  a  London 
Road  Car  omnibus,  snatched  the  Union  Jack  from  its 
socket,  and  surged  into  Hammersmith  Town  Hall  to  yell 
and  hoot  at  the  farouche  Irishmen  and  dirty  Socialists 
who  were  mouthing  their  hatred  of  the  war  and  exulting 
in  the  unlucky  capture  of  two  regiments.  The  School 
Cadet  Corps  could  not  accept  the  mass  of  recruits  that 
demanded  to  be  enrolled.  Drums  were  bought  by  sub- 
scription, and  in  the  armory  down  under  the  school  tatoo 
and  rataplan  voiced   the  martial  spirit  of   St.  James'. 

One  day  Alan  brought  back  the  news  that  his  Uncle 
Kenneth  was  ordered  to  the  front,  that  he  would  sail 
from  Southampton  in  a  few  days.  Leave  was  granted  Alan 
to  go  and  say  good-bye  and,  in  the  patriotic  fervor  that 
now  burned  even  in  the  hearts  of  schoolmasters,  Michael 
was  accorded  leave  to  accompany  him. 

They  traveled  down  to  Southampton  on  a  wet,  windy 
November  day,  proud  to  think  as  they  sat  opposite  one 
another  in  the  gloomy  railway-carriage  that  in  some  way 
since  this  summons  they  were  both  more  intimately  con- 
nected with  the  war. 

In  a  dreary  Southampton  hotel  they  met  Mrs.  Ross, 
and  Michael  thought  that  she  was  very  beautiful  and  very 
brave  waiting  in  the  chilly  fly-blown  dining-room  of  the 
hotel.  Three  years  of  marriage  scarcely  seemed  to  have 
altered  his  dear  Miss  Carthew;  yet  there  was  a  dignity,  a 
carven  stillness  that  Michael  had  never  associated  with 
the  figure  of  his  governess,  or  perhaps  it  was  that  now  he 
was  older,  more  capable  of  appreciating  the  noble  lines  of 
this  woman. 

It  gave  Michael  a  sentimental  pang  to  watch  Mrs.  Ross 
presiding  over  their  lunch  as  she  had  in  the  past  presided 


332  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

over  so  many  lunches.  They  spoke  hardly  at  all  of  Captain 
Ross's  departure,  but  they  talked  of  Nancy,  and  how  well 
she  was  doing  as  secretary  to  Lord  Perham,  of  Mrs.  Car- 
thew^,  still  among  the  roses  and  plums  of  Cobble  Place, 
and  of  a  hundred  jolly  bygone  events.  Mrs.  Ross  was 
greatly  interested  to  hear  of  Stella,  and  greatly  amused  by 
Michael's  arrangement  for  her  future. 

Then  Captain  Ross  came  in,  and  after  a  few  jokes,  which 
fell  very  flat  in  the  bleak  dining-room — perhaps  because 
the  two  boys  were  in  awe  of  this  soldier  going  away  to 
the  wars,  or  perhaps  because  they  knew  that  there  was 
indeed  nothing  to  joke  about — said: 

"The  regiment  comes  in  by  the  2:45.  We  shall  embark 
at  once.     What's  the  time  now?" 

Everyone,  even  the  mournful  waiter,  stared  up  at  the 
wall.     It  was  two  o'clock. 

''Half  an  hour  before  I  need  go  down  to  the  station," 
said  Captain  Ross,  and  then  he  began  to  whistle  very 
quietly.  The  wind  was  getting  more  boisterous,  and  the 
rain  rattled  on  the  windows  as  if,  without,  a  menacing 
hand  flung  gravel  for  a  signal. 

"Can  you  two  boys  amuse  yourselves  for  a  little  while?'* 
asked  Captain  Ross. 

"Oh,  rather,"  said  Michael  and  Alan. 

"I've  just  one  or  two  things  I  wanted  to  say  to  you, 
dear,"  said  Captain  Ross,  turning  to  his  wife.  They  left 
the  dining-room  together.  Michael  and  Alan  sat  silently 
at  the  table,  crumbling  bread  and  making  patterns  in  the 
salt-cellar.  They  could  hear  the  gaunt  clock  ticking  away 
on  the  stained  wall  above  them.  From  time  to  time  far-oflf 
bugles  sounded  above  the  tossing  wind.  So  they  sat  for 
twenty  solemn  minutes.  Then  the  husband  and  wife  came 
back.  The  bill  was  paid;  the  door  of  the  hotel  swung 
back;    the  porter   said,    "Good   luck,   sir,"   very   solemnly, 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  333 

and  in  a  minute  they  were  walking  down  the  street  toward 
the  railway-station  through  the  wind  and  rain. 

"I'll  see  you  on  the  dock  in  a  moment,"  said  Captain 
Ross.  "You'd  better  take  a  cab  down  and  wait  under 
cover." 

Thence  onward  for  an  hour  or  more  all  was  noise, 
excitement  and  bustle  in  contrast  to  the  brooding,  ominous 
calm  of  the  dingy  hotel.  Regiments  were  marching  down 
to  the  docks;  bands  were  playing;  there  were  drums  and 
bugles,  shouts  of  command,  clatter  of  horses,  the  occasional 
rumble  of  a  gun-carriage,  inquiries,  the  sobbing  of  children 
and  women,  oaths,  the  hooting  of  sirens,  a  steam-engine's 
whistle,  and  at  last,  above  everything  else,  was  heard  the 
wail  of  approaching  pipes. 

Nearer  and  nearer  swirled  the  maddening,  gladdening, 
heartrending  tune  they  played;  the  Kintail  Highlanders 
were  coming;  they  swung  into  view;  they  halted,  com- 
pany after  company  of  them;  there  were  shouts  of  com- 
mand very  close;  suddenly  Michael  found  his  hand  clenched 
and  saw  Captain  Ross's  gray  eyes  smiling  good-bye;  Alan's 
sleeve  seemed  to  have  a  loose  thread  that  wanted  biting  ofiE; 
the  sirens  of  the  great  transport  triimpeted  angrily  and, 
resounding  through  the  sinking  hearts  of  those  w^ho  were 
not  going,  robbed  them  of  whatever  pluck  was  left.  Every- 
where in  view  sister,  mother,  and  wife  were  held  for  a 
moment  by  those  they  loved.  The  last  man  was  aboard; 
the  gangway  was  hauled  up;  the  screw  pounded  the 
water;  the  ship  began  to  glide  away  from  the  dock  with 
slow,  sickening  inevitableness.  Upon  the  air  danced 
handkerchiefs,  feeble  fluttering  envoys  of  the  passionate 
farewells  they  flung  to  the  wind.  Spellbound,  intolerably 
powerless,  the  watchers  on  shore  waved  and  waved;  smaller 
grew  the  faces  leaning  over  the  rail;  smaller  and  smaller, 
until  at  last  they  were  unrecognizable  to  those  left  behind; 
and  now  the  handkerchiefs   were  waved   in   a  new   fever 


334  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

of  energy  as  if  with  the  fading  of  the  faces  there  had  fallen 
upon  the  assembly  a  fresh  communal  grief,  a  grief  that,  no 
longer  regarding  personal  heartbreaks,  frantically  pursued 
the  great  graceful  ship  herself,  whose  prow  was  straining 
for  the  open  sea.  Still,  though  now  scarcely  even  were 
human  forms  discernible  upon  the  decks,  the  handkerchiefs 
jigged  on  for  horribly  n>echanic  gestures,  as  if  those  who 
w^aved   them  were   become  automatons   through  sorrow. 

Glad  of  the  musty  peace  of  a  railway-carriage  after  the 
tears  and  confusion  of  the  docks,  Michael  and  Alan  and 
Mrs.  Ross  spoke  very  little  on  the  journey  back  to  London. 

"Aren't  you  going  to  stay  the  night  with  us  at  Rich- 
mond?" Alan  asked. 

"No,  I  must  get  down  to  Cobble  Place.  My  4arge 
son  has  already  gone  there  with  his  nurse." 

"Your  son?"  exclaimed  Michael.  "Oh,  of  course,  I 
forgot." 

So  Alan  and  he  put  Mrs.  Ross  into  her  train  and  rode 
back  together  on  an  omnibus,  proud  citizens  of  an  Empire 
whose  inspiration  they  had  lately  beheld  in  action. 

Next  morning  the  Olympians  on  their  frieze  were  con- 
siderably impressed  by  Michael's  account  of  the  stirring 
scene  at  Southampton. 

"Oh,  the  war  will  be  over  almost  at  once.  We're  not 
taking  any  risks.  We're  sending  out  enough  men  to  con- 
quer more  than  the  Transvaal,"  said  the  heroes  wisely. 

But  soon  there  came  the  news  of  fresh  defeats,  and 
when  in  the  middle  of  January  school  reassembled  there 
were  actually  figures  missing  from  the  familiar  composition 
itself.  Actually  contemporary  heroes  had  left,  had  enlisted 
in  the  Volunteers  and  Yeomanry,  were  even  now  waiting 
for  orders  and  meantime  self-consciously  wandering  round 
the  school-grounds  in  militant  khaki.  Sandhurst  and  Wool- 
wich candidates  passed  with  incredible  ease;  boys  were  com- 
ing to  school  in  mourning ;  Old  Jacobeans  died  bravely,  and 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  335 

their  deaths  were  recorded  in  the  school  magazine;  one 
Old  Jacobean  gained  the  Victoria  Cross,  and  everyone 
walked   from  prayers  very  proudly  upon   that   day. 

Michael  w^as  still  conventionally  patriotic,  but  some- 
times with  the  progress  of  the  war  a  doubt  would  creep 
into  his  mind  whether  this  increasing  blazonry  of  a  coun- 
try's emotion  were  so  fine  as  once  he  had  thought  it, 
whether  England  were  losing  some  of  her  self-control  under 
reverses,  and,  worst  of  all,  whether  in  her  victories  she  were 
becoming  blatant.  He  remembered  how  he  had  been  sick- 
ened by  the  accounts  of  American  hysteria  during  the  war 
with  Spain,  whose  weaker  cause,  true  to  his  earliest  inclina- 
tions, he  had  been  compelled  to  champion.  And  now  when 
the  tide  was  turning  in  England's  favor,  when  every  other 
boy  came  to  school  wearing  a  khaki  tie  quartered  with 
blue  or  red  and  some  of  them  even  came  tricked  out  with 
Union  Jack  waistcoats,  when  the  wearing  of  a  British 
general's  head  on  a  button  and  the  hissing  of  Kruger's 
name  at  a  pantomime  were  signs  of  high  emotion,  when 
many  wastrels  of  his  acquaintance  had  uniforms,  and  when 
the  patriotism  of  their  friends  consisted  of  making  these 
undignified  supernumeraries  drunk,  Michael  began  to  won- 
der whether  war  conducted  by  a  democracy  had  ever  been 
much  more  than  a  circus  for  the  populace. 

And  when  one  bleak  morning  in  early  spring  he  read  in 
a  fatal  column  that  Captain  Kenneth  Ross  had  been  killed 
in  action,  his  smouldering  resentment  blazed  out,  and  as 
he  hurried  to  school  with  sickened  heart  and  eyes  in  a  mist 
of  welling  tears,  he  could  have  cursed  everyone  of  the 
rosetted  patriots  for  whose  vainglory  such  a  death  paid 
the  price.  Alan,  as  he  expected,  was  not  at  school,  and 
Michael  spent  a  restless,  miserable  morning.  He  hated 
the  idea  of  discussing  the  news  with  his  friends  of  the 
hot-w^ater  pipes,  and  when  one  by  one  the  unimaginative, 
flaccid  comments   flowed  easily   forth  upon   an   event   that 


336  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

was  too  great  for  them  even  to  hear,  much  less  to  speak 
of,  Michael's  rage  burst  forth: 

"For  God's  sake,  you  asses,  don't  talk  so  much.  I'm 
sick  of  this  war.  I'm  sick  of  reading  that  a  lot  of  decent 
chaps  have  died  for  nothing,  because  it  is  for  nothing, 
if  this  country  is  never  again  going  to  be  able  to  stand 
defeat  or  victory.  War  isn't  anything  to  admire  in  itself. 
All  the  good  of  war  is  what  it  makes  of  the  people  who 
fight,  and  what  it  makes  of  the  people  who  stay  at  home." 

The  Olympians  roared  with  laughter,  and  congratulated 
Michael  on  his  humorous  oration. 

"Can't  you  see  that  I'm  serious,  that  it  is  important  to 
be  gentlemen?"  Michael  shouted. 

"Who  says  we  aren't  gentlemen?"  demanded  a  very 
vapid,  but  slightly  bellicose  hero. 

"Nobody  says  you  aren't  a  gentleman,  you  ass;  at  least 
nobody  sa5'S  you  eat  peas  with  a  knife,  but,  my  God,  if 
you  think  it's  decent  to  wear  that  damned  awful  button  in 
your  coat  when  fellows  are  being  killed  every  day  for  you, 
for  your  pleasure,  for  your  profit,  for  your  existence,  all 
I  can  say  is  I   don't." 

Michael  felt  that  the  climax  of  this  speech  was  some- 
what weak,  and  he  relapsed  into  silence,  biting  his  nails 
with  the  unexpressed  rage  of  limp  words. 

"You  might  as  well  say  that  the  School  oughtn't  to  cheer 
at  a  football  match,"  said  Abercrombie,  the  Captain. 

"I  would  say  so,  if  I  thought  that  all  the  cheerers  never 
expected  and  never  even  intended  to  play  themselves. 
That's  why  professional  football  is  so  rotten." 

"You  were  damned  glad  to  get  your  Third  Fifteen  cap," 
Abercrombie  pointed  out  gruffly. 

The  laugh  that  followed  this  rebuke  from  the  mightiest 
of  the  immortals  goaded  Michael  into  much  more  than  he 
had  intended  to  say  when  he  began  his  unlucky  tirade. 

"Oh,  was  I?"   he  sneered.      "That's  just  where  you're 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  337 

quite  wrong,  because,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  I  don't  intend 
to  play  football  any  more,  if  School  Footer  is  simply  to  be 
a  show  for  a  lot  of  wasters.  I'm  not  going  to  exert  myself 
like  an  acrobat  in  a  ciicus,  if  it  all  means  nothing." 

The  heroes  regarded  Michael  with  surprise  and  distaste; 
they  shrank  from  him  coldly  as  if  his  unreasonable  outburst 
in  some  w^ay  involved  their  honor.  They  laughed  uncom- 
fortably, each  one  hiding  himself  behind  another's  shoulders, 
as  if  they  mocked  a  madman.  The  bell  for  school  rang, 
and  the  heroes  left  him.  Michael,  still  enraged,  went 
back  to  his  class-room.  Then  he  wondered  if  Alan  would 
hate  him  for  having  made  his  uncle's  death  an  occasion 
for  this  breach  of  a  school  code  of  manners.  He  supposed 
sadly  that  Alan  would  not  understand  any  more  than  the 
others  what  he  felt.  He  cursed  himself  for  having  let 
these  ordinary,  obvious,  fat-headed  fools  so  impose  upon 
his  imagination  as  to  lead  him  to  consider  them  worthy 
of  his  respect.  He  had  wasted  three  months  in  this  society; 
he  had  thought  he  was  happy  and  had  congratulated  him- 
self upon  at  last  finding  school  endurable.  School  was  a 
prison,  such  as  it  always  had  been.  He  was  seventeen 
and  a  schoolboy.  It  was  ignominious.  At  one  o'clock  he 
waited  for  nobody,  but  walked  quickly  home  to  lunch,  still 
fuming  with  the  loss  of  his  self-control  and,  as  he  looked 
back  on  the  scene,  of  his  dignity. 

His  mother  came  down  to  lunch  with  signs  of  a  morn- 
ing's tears,  and  Michael  looked  at  her  in  astonishment. 
He  had  not  supposed  that  she  would  be  much  affected  by 
the  death  of  Captain  Ross,  and  he  inquired  if  she  had  been 
writing  to  Mrs.  Ross. 

"No,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Fane.  "Why  should  I  have 
written  to  Mrs.  Ross  this  morning?" 

"Didn't  you  see  in  the  paper?"  Michael  asked. 

"See  what?" 

"That  Captain  Ross  was  killed  in  action." 


338  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Oh,  no,"  gasped  his  mother,  white  and  shuddering. 
"Oh,  Michael,  how  horrible,  and  on  the  same  day." 

''The  same  day  as  what?" 

Mrs.  Fane  looked  at  her  son  for  a  moment  very  intently, 
as  if  she  were  minded  to  tell  him  something.  Then  the 
parlor-maid  came  into  the  room,  and  she  seemed  to  change 
her  mind,  and  finally  said  in  perfectly  controlled  accents: 

''The  same  day  as  the  announcement  is  made  that — that 
your  old  friend  Lord  Saxby  has  raised  a  troop  of  horse — 
Saxby's  horse.     He  is  going  to  Africa  almost  at  once." 

"Another  gentleman  going  to  be  killed  for  the  sake  of 
these  rowdy  swine  at  home!"  said  Michael  savagely. 

"Michael!  What  do  you  mean?  Don't  you  admire  a 
man  for — for  trying  to  do  something  for  his  country?" 

"It  depends  on  the  country,"  Michael  answered.  "If 
you  think  it's  worth  while  doing  anything  for  what  England 
is  now,  I  don't.  I  wouldn't  raise  a  finger,  if  London  were 
to  be  invaded  to-morrow." 

"I  don't  understand  you,  dearest  boy.  You're  talking 
rather  like  a  Radical,  and  rather  like  old  Conservative 
gentlemen  I  remember  as  a  girl.  It's  such  a  strange  mix- 
ture. I  don't  think  you  quite  understand  what  you're 
saying." 

"I  understand  perfectly  what  I'm  saying,"  Michael  con- 
tradicted. 

"Well,  then  I  don't  think  you  ought  to  talk  like  that. 
I  don't  think  it's  kind  or  considerate  to  me  and,  after 
you've  just  heard  about  Captain  Ross's  death,  I  think  it's 
irreverent.  And  I  thought  you  attached  so  much  impor- 
tance to  reverence,"  Mrs.  Fane  added  in  a  complaining 
tone. 

Michael  was  vexed  by  his  mother's  failure  to  understand 
his  point  of  view,  and  became  harder  and  more  perverse 
every  minute. 


ACTION    AND    REACTION         339 

"Lord  Saxby  would  be  shocked  to  hear  you  talking  like 
this,  shocked  and  horrified,"  she  went  on. 

"I'm  very  sorry  for  hurting  Lord  Saxby's  feelings," 
said  Michael  with  elaborate  sarcasm.  "But  really  I  don't 
see  that  it  matters  much  to  him  what  I  think." 

"He  wants  to  see  you  before  he  sails,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"To  see  me?  Why?"  gasped  Michael.  "Why  on  earth 
should  he  want  to  see  me?" 

"Well,  he's — he's  in  a  way  the  head  of  our  family." 

"He's  not  taken  much  interest  in  me  up  to  the  present. 
It's  rather  odd  he  should  want  to  see  me  now  when  he's 
going  away." 

"Michael,  don't  be  so  bitter  and  horrid.  Lord  Saxby's 
so  kind,  and  he — and  he — might  never  come  back." 

"Dearest  mother,"  said  Michael,  "I  think  you're  a  little 
unreasonable.  Why  should  I  go  and  meet  a  man  now, 
and  perhaps  grow  to  like  him — and  then  say  good-bye  to 
him,  perhaps  forever?" 

"Michael,  do  not  talk  like  that.  You  are  selfish  and 
brutal.  You've  grown  up  to  be  perfectly  heartless,  although 
you  can  be  charming.  I  think  you'd  better  not  see  Lord 
Saxby.     He'd  be  ashamed  of  you." 

Michael   rose   in   irritation. 

"My  dear  mother,  what  on  earth  business  is  it  of  Lord 
Saxby's  how  I  behave?  I  don't  understand  what  you 
mean  by  being  ashamed  of  me.  I  have  lived  all  these  years, 
and  I've  seen  Lord  Saxby  once.  He  sent  me  some  Siamese 
stamps  and  some  soldiers.  I  daresay  he's  a  splendid  chap. 
I  know  I  liked  him  terrifically  when  I  was  a  kid,  and  if 
he's  killed  I  shall  be  sorry — I  shall  be  more  than  sorry — 
I  shall  be  angry,  furious  that  for  the  sake  of  these  insuffer- 
able rowdies  another  decent  chap  is  going  to  risk  his  life." 

Mrs.  Fane  put  out  her  hand  to  stop  Michael's  flowing 
tirade,  but  he  paid  no  attention,  talking  away  less  to  her 


340  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

than  to  himself.  Indeed,  long  before  he  had  finished,  she 
made  no  pretense  of  listening,  but  merely  sat  crying  quietly. 

"I've  been  thinking  a  good  deal  lately  about  this  war," 
Michael  declared.  "I'm  beginning  to  doubt  whether  it's 
a  just  war,  whether  we  didn't  simply  set  out  on  it  for 
brag  and  money.  I'm  not  sure  that  I  want  to  see  the 
Boers  conquered.  They're  a  small  independent  nation,  and 
they  have  old-fashioned  ideas  and  they're  narrovv'-minded 
Bible-worshipers,  but  there's  something  noble  about  them, 
something  much  nobler  than  there  is  in  these  rotten  adven- 
turers who  go  out  to  fight  them.  Of  course,  I  don't  mean 
by  that  people  like  Captain  Ross  or  Lord  Saxby.  They're 
gentlemen.  They  go  either  because  it's  their  duty  or  be- 
cause they  think  it's  their  duty.  And  they're  the  ones  that 
get  killed.  You  don't  hear  of  these  swaggerers  in  khaki 
being  killed.  I  haven't  heard  yet  of  many  of  them  even 
going  to  the  front  at  all.  Oh,  mother,  I  am  fed  up  with 
the  rotten  core  of  everything  that  looks  so  fine  on  the 
outside." 

Mrs.  Fane  was  now  crying  loud  enough  to  make  Michael 
stop  in  sudden  embarrassment. 

"I  say,  mother,  don't  cry.  I  expect  I've  been  talking 
nonsense,"  he  softly  told  her. 

"I  don't  know  where  you  get  these  views.  I  was  always 
so  proud  of  you.  I  thought  you  were  charming  and  mys- 
terious,   and   you're   simply  vulgar!" 

"Vulgar?"  echoed  Michael  in  dismay. 

Mrs.  Fane  nodded  vehemently. 

"Oh,  well,  if  I'm  vulgar,  I'll  go." 

Michael  hurried  to  the  door. 

"Where  are  you  going?"  asked  his  mother  in  alarm. 

"Oh,  lord,  only  to  school.  That's  what  makes  a  scene 
like  this  so  funny.  After  I've  worked  myself  up  and  made 
you  angry " 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  341 

"Not  angry,  dear.  Only  grieved,"  interrupted  his 
mother. 

"You  were  more  than  grieved  when  you  said  I  was 
vulgar.  At  least  I  hope  you  were.  But,  after  it's  all  over, 
I  go  trotting  ofE  like  a  good  little  boy  to  school — to  school 
— to  school.  Oh,  mother,  what  is  the  good  of  expecting 
me  to  believe  in  the  finest  fellows  in  the  world  being  killed 
while  I'm  still  at  school?  What's  the  good  of  making  me 
more  wretched,  more  discontented,  more  alive  to  my  own 
futile  existence  by  asking  me  now,  when  he's  going  away, 
to  make  friends  with  Lord  Saxby?  Oh,  darling  mother, 
can't  you  realize  that  I'm  no  longer  a  little  boy  who  wants 
to  clap  his  hands  at  the  sight  of  a  red  coat?  Let  me  kiss 
you,  mother.  I'm  sorry  I  was  vulgar,  but  I've  minded 
so  dreadfully  about  Captain  Ross,  and  it's  all  for  nothing." 

Mrs.  Fane  let  herself  be  petted  by  her  son,  but  she  did 
not  again  ask  Michael  to  see  Lord  Saxby  before  he  went 
away  to  the  war. 

Alan  was  still  absent  at  afternoon  school,  and  Michael, 
disdaining  his  place  in  the  heroic  group,  passed  quickly  into 
the  class-room  and  read  in  Alison  of  Salamanca  and  Al- 
buera  and  of  the  storming  of  Badajoz,  wondering  what  had 
happened  to  his  country  since  those  famous  dates.  He 
supposed  that  then  was  the  nation's  zenith,  for  from  w^hat 
he  could  make  out  of  the  Crimean  War,  that  had  been  as 
little  creditable  to  England  as  this  miserable  business  of 
the  present. 

In  the  afternoon  Michael  thought  he  would  walk  over 
to  Notting  Dale  and  see  Mr.  Viner — perhaps  he  would 
understand  some  of  his  indignation — and  this  evening 
when  all  was  quiet  he  must  write  to  Mrs.  Ross.  On  his 
way  down  the  Kensington  Road  he  met  Wilmot,  whom 
he  had  not  seen  since  the  summer,  for  luckily  about  the 
time  of  the  row  Wilmot  had  been  going  abroad  and  was 
only  lately  back.      He  recognized  Wilmot's  fanciful  walk 


342  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

from  a  distance,  and  nearly  crossed  over  to  the  opposite 
pavement  to  avoid  meeting  him;  but  on  second  thoughts 
decided  he  would  like  to  hear  a  fresh  opinion  of  the  war. 

''Why,  here's  a  delightful  meeting,"  said  Wilmot.  "I 
have  been  wondering  why  you  didn't  come  round  to  see 
me.     You  got  my  cards?" 

"Oh,  yes,  rather,"  said  Michael. 

"I  have  been  in  Greece  and  Italy.  I  wish  you  had  been 
with  me.  I  thought  of  you,  as  I  sat  in  the  ruined  rose- 
gardens  of  Paestum.  You've  no  idea  how  well  those 
columns  of  honey-colored  Travertine  would  become  you, 
Michael.  But  I'm  so  glad  to  see  that  you  have  not  yet 
clothed  yourself  in  khaki.  This  toy  war  is  so  utterly  ab- 
surd. I  feel  as  if  I  were  living  in  a  Christmas  bazaar. 
How  dreadfully  these  puttees  and  haversacks  debase  even 
the  most  beautiful  figures.  What  is  a  haversack?  It 
sounds  so  Lenten,  so  eloquent  of  mortification.  I  have 
discovered  some  charming  Cyprian  cigarettes.  Do  come 
and  let  me  watch  you  enjoy  them.  How  young  you  look, 
and  yet  how  old!" 

"I'm  feeling  very  fit,"  said  Michael  loftily. 

"How  abruptly  informative  you  are!  What  has  hap- 
pened to  you?" 

"I'm   thinking  about  this  war." 

"Good  gracious,"  cried  Wilmot  in  mincing  amazement. 
"What  an  odd  subject.  Soon  you  will  be  telling  me  that 
by  moonlight  j^ou  brood  upon  the  Albert  Memorial.  But 
perhaps  your  mind  is  full  of  trophies.  Perhaps  you  are 
picturing  to  yourself  in  Piccadilly  a  second  column  of 
Trajan  displacing  the  amorous  and  acrobatic  Cupid  who 
now  presides  over  the  painted  throng.  Come  with  me 
some  evening  to  the  Long  Bar  at  the  Criterion,  and  while 
the  Maori-like  barmaids  titter  in  their  devergondage,  we 
will  select  the  victorious  site  and  picture  to  ourselves  the 
Boer  commanders  chained  like  hairy  Scythians  to  the  chariot 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  343 

of  whatever  absurd  general  chooses  to  accept  the  triumph 
awarded  to  him  by  our  legislative  bourgeoisie." 

"I  think  I  must  be  getting  on,"  said  Michael. 

**How  urgent!  You  speak  like  Phaeton  or  Icarus,  and 
pray  remember  the  calamities  that  befell  them.  But  seri- 
ously, when  are  you  coming  to  see  me?" 

"Oh,  I'm  rather  busy,"  said  Michael  briefly. 

Wilmot  looked  at  him  curiously  with  his  glittering  eyes 
for  a  moment.     Then  he  spoke  again: 

"Farewell,  Narcissus.  Have  you  learnt  that  I  was  but 
a  shallow  pool  in  which  to  watch  your  reflection?  Did  I 
flatter  you  too  much  or  not  enough?  Who  shall  say? 
But  you  know  I'm  always  your  friend  and,  when  this 
love-affair  is  done,  I  shall  always  be  interested  to  hear 
the  legend  of  it  told  movingly  when  and  where  you  will, 
but  perhaps  best  of  all  in  October  when  the  full  moon 
lies  like  a  huge  apricot  upon  the  chimneys  of  the  town. 
Farewell,  Narcissus.  Does  she  display  your  graces  very 
clearly  ?" 

'Tm  not  in  love  with  anybody,  if  that's  what  you  mean," 
said  Michael. 

"No?  But  you  are  on  the  margin  of  a  strange  pool, 
and  soon  you  will  be  peeping  over  the  bulrushes  to  stare 
at  yourself  again." 

Then  Mr.  Wilmot,  making  his  pontifical  and  undulatory 
adieu,  passed  on. 

"Silly  ass,"  said  Michael  to  himself.  "And  he  always 
thinks  he  knows  everything." 

Michael  turned  out  of  the  noisy  main  road  into  the 
sylvan  urbanity  of  Holland  Walk.  A  haze  of  tender 
diaphanous  green  clung  to  the  boles  of  the  smirched  elms, 
softening  the  sooty  decay  that  made  their  antiquity  so 
grotesque  and  so  dishonorable.  Michael  sat  down  for 
a  while  on  a  bench,  inhaling  the  immemorial  perfume  of 
a   London   spring   and   listening   to   the   loud   courtship    of 


344  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

the  blackbirds  in  the  ragged  shrubberies  that  lined  the  rail- 
ings of  Holland  Park.  He  was  not  made  any  the  more 
content  with  himself  by  this  effluence  of  revivified  effort 
that  impregnated  the  air  around  him.  He  was  out  of  har- 
mony with  every  impulse  of  the  season,  and  felt  just  as 
tightly  fettered  now  as  long  ago  he  used  to  feel  on  walks 
by  this  same  line  of  blackened  trees  with  Nurse  to  quell  his 
lightest  step  toward  freedom.  Where  was  Nurse  now? 
The  pungent  odor  of  privet  blown  along  a  dying  w^ind  of 
March  w^as  quick  w^ith  old  memories  of  forbidden  hiding- 
places,  and  he  looked  up,  half  expectant  of  her  mummified 
shape  peering  after  his  straying  steps  round  the  gnarled  and 
blackened  trunk  of  the  nearest  elm.  Michael  rose  quickly 
and  went  on  his  way  toward  Notting  Dale.  This  Holland 
Walk  had  always  been  a  haunted  spot,  not  at  all  a  place 
to  hearten  one,  especially  where  at  the  top  it  converged 
to  a  silent  passage  between  wooden  palings  whose  twinkling 
interstices  and  exudations  of  green  slime  had  always  been 
queerly  sinister.  Even  now  Michael  was  glad  when  he 
could  hear  again  the  noise  of  traffic  in  the  Bayswater 
Road.  As  he  walked  on  toward  Mr.  Viner's  house  he 
gave  rein  to  fanciful  moralizings  upon  these  two  great 
roads  on  either  side  of  the  Park  that  ran  a  parallel  course, 
but  never  met.  How  foreign  it  all  seemed  on  this  side 
with  unfamiliar  green  omnibuses  instead  of  red,  with  never 
even  a  well-known  beggar  or  pavement-artist.  The  very 
sky  had  an  alien  look,  seeming  vaster  somehow^  than  the 
circumscribed  clouds  of  Kensington.  Perhaps,  after  all, 
the  people  of  this  intolerably  surprising  city  were  not  so 
much  to  be  blamed  for  their  behavior  during  a  period  of 
war.  They  had  nothing  to  hold  them  together,  to  teach 
them  to  endure  and  enjoy,  to  suffer  and  rejoice  in  company. 
These  great  main  roads  sweeping  West  and  East  with 
multitudinous  chimney-pots  between  were  symbolic  of  the 
whole  muddle  of  existence. 


ACTION   AND    REACTION  345 


"But  what  do  I  want?"  Michael  asked  himself  so  loudly 
that  an  errand-boy  stayed  his  whistling  and  stared  after 
him  until  he  turned  the  corner. 

"I  don't  know,"  he  muttered  in  the  face  of  a  fussy 
little  woman,  who  jumped  aside  to  let  him  pass. 

Soon  he  was  deep  in  one  of  Mr.  Viner's  armchairs, 
and,  without  waiting  even  to  produce  one  of  the  attenuated 
pipes  he  still  affected,  exclaimed  with  desolating  conviction: 

"I'm  absolutely  sick  of  everything!" 

"What,  again?"  said  the  priest,  smiling. 

"It's  this  war." 

"You're  not  thinking  of  enlisting  in  the  Imperial  Yeo- 
manry?" 

"Oh,  no,  but  a  friend  of  mine— Alan  Merivale's  uncle — 
has  been  killed.     It  seems  all  wrong." 

"My  dear  old  chap,"  said  Mr.  Viner  earnestly,  "I'm 
sorry  for  you." 

"Oh,  it  isn't  me  you've  got  to  pity,"  Michael  cried. 
"I'd  be  glad  of  his  death.  It's  the  finest  death  a  fellow 
can  have.  But  there's  nothing  fine  about  it,  when  one 
sees  these  gibbering  blockheads  shouting  and  yelling  about 
nothing.     I  don't  know  what's  the  matter  with  England." 

"Is  England  any  worse  than  the  rest  of  the  world?'* 
asked  Mr.  Viner. 

"All  this  wearing  of  buttons  and  khaki  ties!"  Michael 
groaned. 

"But  that's  the  only  way  the  man  in  the  street  can? 
show  his  devotion.  You  don't  object  to  ritualism,  do  you? 
You  cross  yourself  and  bow  down.  The  church  has  colors 
and  lights  and  incense.  Do  all  these  dishonor  Our  Lord's 
death?" 

"That's  different,"  said  Michael.  "And  anyway,  I 
don't  know  that  the  comparison  is  much  good  to  me  now. 
I  think  I've  lost  my  faith.  I  am  sorry  to  shock  you,  Mr. 
Viner."     ^ 


346  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"You  don't  shock  me  at  all,  my  dear  boy." 

"Don't  I?"  said  Michael  in  slightly  disappointed  tones. 

"You  forget  that  a  priest  is  more  difficult  to  shock  than 
anyone  on  earth." 

"I  like  the  way  you  take  yourself  as  a  typical  priest. 
Very  few  of  them  are  like  you." 

"Come,  that's  rather  a  stupid  remark,  I  think,"  said 
Mr.  Viner  coldly. 

"Is  it?  I'm  sorry.  It  doesn't  seem  to  worry  you  very 
much  that  I've  lost  my  faith,"  Michael  went  on  in  an 
aggrieved  voice. 

"No,  because  I  don't  think  you  have.  I've  got  a  high 
enough  opinion  of  you  to  believe  that,  if  you  really  had  lost 
your  faith,  you  wouldn't  plunge  comfortably  down  into 
one  of  my  armchairs  and  give  me  the  information  in  the 
same  sort  of  tone  you'd  tell  me  you'd  forgotten  to  bring 
back  a  book  I'd  lent  you." 

"I  know  you  always  find  it  very  difficult  to  take  me 
seriously,"  Michael  grumbled.  "I  suppose  that's  the  right 
method  with  people  like  me.'* 

"I  thought  you'd  come  up  to  talk  about  the  South  Afri- 
can War.  If  I'd  known  the  war  was  so  near  home,  I 
shouldn't  have  been  so  frivolous,"  said  the  priest.  His 
eyes  were  so  merry  in  the  leaping  firelight  that  Michael 
was  compelled  against  his  will  to  smile, 

"Of  course,  you  make  me  laugh  at  the  time  and  I 
forget  how  serious  I  meant  to  be  when  I  arrived,  and  it's 
not  until  I'm  at  home  again  that  I  realize  I'm  no  nearer 
to  what  I  wanted  to  say  than  when  I  came  up,"  protested 
Michael. 

"I'm  not  the  unsympathetic  boor  you'd  make  me  out," 
Mr.  Viner  said. 

"Oh,  I  perfectly  understand  that  all  this  heart-searching 
becomes  a  nuisance.  But  honestly,  Mr.  Viner,  I  think  I've 
done  nothing  long  enough." 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  347 

**Then  you  do  want  to  enlist?"  said  the  priest  quickly. 

"Why  must  'doing'  mean  only  one  thing  nowadays? 
Surely  South  Africa  hasn't  got  a  monopoly  of  whatever's 
being  done,"  Michael  argued.  ''No,  I  don't  want  to 
enlist,"  he  went  on.  "And  I  don't  want  to  go  into  a 
monastery,  and  I'm  not  sure  that  I  really  even  want  to 
go  to  church  again." 

"Give  up  going  for  a  bit,"  advised  the  priest. 

Michael  jumped  up  from  the  chair  and  walked  over 
to  the  bay-window,  through  which  came  a  discordant  sound 
of  children  playing  in  the  street  outside. 

"It's  impossible  to  be  serious  with  you.  I  suppose  you're 
fed  up  with  people  like  me,"  Michael  complained.  "I 
know  I'm  moody  and  irritating,  but  I've  got  a  lot  to 
grumble  about.  I  don't  seem  to  have  any  natural  in- 
clination for  any  profession.  I'm  not  a  musical  genius 
like  my  young  sister.  That's  pretty  galling,  you  know, 
really.  After  all  girls  can  get  along  better  than  boys  with- 
out any  special  gifts,  and  she  simply  shines  compared  with 
me.  I  have  no  father.  I've  no  idea  who  I  was,  where 
I  came  from,  what  I'm  going  to  be.  I  keep  on  trying  to 
be  optimistic  and  think  everything  is  good  and  beautiful, 
and  then  almost  at  once  it  turns  out  bad  and  ugly." 

"Has  your  religion  really  turned  out  bad  and  ugly?" 
asked  the  priest  gently. 

"Not  right  through,  but  here  and  there,  yes." 

"The  religion  itself  or  the  people  who  profess  it?"  Mr. 
Viner  persisted. 

"Doesn't  it  amount  to  the  same  thing  ultimately?'* 
Michael  parried.  "But  leave  out  religion  for  the  moment, 
and  consider  this  war.  The  only  justification  for  such  a 
war  is  the  moral  effect  it  has  on  the  nations  engaged.  Now, 
I  ask  you,  do  you  sincerely  believe  there  has  been  a  trace 
of  any  purifying  influence  since  we  started  waving  Union 
Jacks  last  September?     It's  no  good;  we  simply  have  not 


348  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

got  it  in  us  to  stand  defeat  or  victory.  At  any  rate,  if 
the  Boers  win,  it  will  mean  the  preservation  of  something. 
Whereas  if  we  win,  we  shall  just  destroy  everything." 

"Michael,  what  do  you  think  is  the  important  thing  for 
this  country  at  this  moment?"  Mr.  Viner  asked. 

''Well,  I  suppose  I  still  think  it  is  that  the  people — 
the  great  mass  of  the  nation,  that  is — should  be  happier 
and  better.  No,  I  don't  think  that's  it  at  all.  I  think  the 
important  thing  is  that  the  people  should  be  able  to  use 
the  power  that's  coming  to  them  in  bigger  lumps  every 
day.  I'd  like  to  think  it  wasn't,  I'd  like  to  believe  that 
democracy  always  will  be  as  it  always  has  been — a  self-made 
failure.  But  against  my  own  will  I  can't  help  believing 
that  this  time  democracy  is  going  to  carry  everything  before 
it.  And  this  war  is  going  to  hurry  it  on.  Of  course 
it  is.  The  masses  will  learn  their  power.  They'll  learn 
that  generals  can  make  fools  of  themselves,  that  officers  can 
be  done  without,  that  professional  soldiers  can  be  cowards, 
but  that  simply  by  paying  we  can  still  win.  And  where's 
the  money  coming  from?  Why,  from  the  class  that  tried 
to  be  clever  and  blufE  the  people  out  of  their  power  by 
staging  this  war.  Well,  do  you  mean  to  tell  me  that  it's 
good  for  a  democracy,  this  sudden  realization  of  their  om- 
nipotence? Look  here,  you  think  I'm  an  excitable  young 
fool,  but  I  tell  you  I've  been  pitching  my  ideals  at  a  blank 
wall  like  so  many  empty  bottles  and " 

"Were  they  empty?"  asked  Mr.  Viner.  "Are  you  sure 
they  were  empty?  May  they  not  have  been  cruses  of 
ointment  the  more  precious  for  being  broken?" 

"Well,  I  wish  I  could  keep  one  for  myself,"  Michael 
said. 

"My  dear  boy,  you'll  never  be  able  to  do  that.  You'll 
always  be  too  prodigal  of  your  ideals.  I  should  have  no 
qualms  about  your  future,  whatever  you  did  meanwhile. 
And,  do  you  know,  I  don't  think  I  have  many  qualms  about 


ACTION    AND    REACTION  349 

this  England  of  ours,  however  badly  she  behaves  some- 
times. I'm  glad  you  recognize  that  the  people  are  coming 
into  their  own.  I  wish  that  you  were  glad,  but  you  will 
be  one  day.  The  Catholic  religion  must  be  a  popular 
religion.  The  Sabbath  was  made  for  man,  you  know. 
Catholicism  is  God's  method  of  throwing  bottles  at  a 
blank  wall — but  not  empty  bottles,  Michael.  On  the 
whole,  I  would  sooner  that  now  you  were  a  reactionary 
than  a  Dantonist.  Your  present  attitude  of  mind  at  any 
rate  gives  you  the  opportunity  of  going  forward,  instead 
of  going  back;  there  will  be  plenty  of  ideals  to  take  the 
places  of  those  you  destroy,  however  priceless.  And  the 
tragedy  of  age  is  not  having  any  more  bottles  to 
throw." 

During  these  words  that  came  soothingly  from  Mr. 
Viner's  firm  lips  Michael  had  settled  himself  down  again 
in  the  armchair  and  lighted  his  pipe. 

"Come,  now,"  said  the  priest,  ''you  and  I  have  muddled 
through  our  discussion  long  enough,  let's  gossip  for  a  change. 
What's  Mark  Chator  doing?" 

"I  haven't  seen  much  of  him  this  term.  He's  still  going 
to  take  orders.  I  find  old  Chator's  eternal  simplicity  and 
goodness  rather  wearing.  Life's  pretty  easy  for  him.  I 
wish  I  could  get  as  much  out  of  it  as  easily,"  Michael 
answered. 

"Well,  I  can't  make  any  comment  on  that  last  remark 
of  yours  without  plunging  into  platitudes  that  would  make 
you  terribly  contemptuous  of  my  struggles  to  avoid  them. 
But  don't  despise  the  Chators  of  this  world." 

**Oh,  I  don't.  I  envy  them.  Well,  I  must  go.  Thanks 
awfully  for  putting  up  with  me  again." 

Michael  picked  up  his  cap  and  hurried  home.  When 
he  reached  Carlington  Road,  he  was  inclined  to  tell  his 
mother  that,  if  she  liked,  he  would  go  and  visit  Lord  Saxby 
before  he  sailed;  but  when   it  came  to   the  point  he  felt 


350  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

too  shy  to  reopen  the  subject,  and  decided  to  let  the  pro- 
posal drop. 

He  was  surprised  to  find  that  it  was  much  easier  to  write 
to  Mrs.  Ross  about  her  husband  than  he  thought  it  would 
be.  Whether  this  long  and  stormy  day  (he  could  scarcely 
believe  that  he  had  only  read  the  news  about  Captain  Ross 
that  morning)  had  purged  him  of  all  complexities  of  emo- 
tion, he  did  not  know;  but  certainly  the  letter  was  easy 
enough. 
My  dear  Mrs.  Ross:  ^4  Carlington   Road. 

I  can't  tell  you  the  sadness  of  to-day.  I've  thought 
about  you  most  tremendously,  and  I  think  you  must  be 
gloriously  proud  of  him.  I  felt  angry  at  first,  but  now  I 
feel  all  right.  You've  always  been  so  stunning  to  me,  and 
I've  never  thanked  you.  I  do  want  to  see  you  soon.  I 
shall  never  forget  saying  good-bye  to  Captain  Ross. 
Mother  asked  me  to  go  and  say  good-bye  to  Lord  Saxby. 
I  don't  suppose  you  ever  met  him.  He's  a  sort  of  cousin 
of  ours.  But  I  did  not  want  to  spoil  the  memory  of  that 
day  at  Southampton.  I  haven't  seen  poor  old  Alan  yet. 
He'll  be  in  despair.  I'm  longing  to  see  him  to-morrow. 
This  is  a  rotten  letter,  but  I  can't  write  down  what  I  feel. 
I  wish  Stella  had  known  Captain  Ross.  She  would  have 
been  able  to  express  her  feelings. 

With  all  my  love,  Your  affectionate 

Michael. 

In  bed  that  night  Michael  thought  what  a  beast  he  had 
made  of  himself  that  day,  and  flung  the  blankets  feverishly 
away  from  his  burnt-out  self.  Figures  of  w^ell-loved  people 
kept  trooping  through  the  darkness,  and  he  longed  to  con- 
verse with  them,  inspired  by  the  limitless  eloquence  of 
the  night-time.  All  that  he  would  say  to  Mr.  Viner,  to 
Mrs.  Ross,  to  Alan,  even  to  good  old  Chator,  splashed  the 
dark  with  fiery  sentences.  He  longed  to  be  with  Stella 
in  a  cool  woodland.  He  almost  got  up  to  go  down  and 
pour  his  soul  out  upon  his  mother's  breast;  but  the  fever 
of  fatigue  mocked  his  impulse  and  he  fell  tossing  into  sleep. 


CHAPTER   XII 

ALAN 

MICHAEL  left  the  house  early  next  day  that  he 
might  make  sure  of  seeing  Alan  for  a  moment 
before  Prayers.  A  snowy  aggregation  of  cumulus 
sustained  the  empyrean  upon  the  volume  of  its  mighty 
curve  and  swell.  The  road  before  him  stretched  shining 
in  a  radiant  drench  of  azure  puddles.  It  was  a  full- 
bosomed  morning  of  immense  peace. 

Michael  rather  dreaded  to  see  Alan  appear  in  oppressive 
black,  and  felt  that  anything  like  a  costume  would  em- 
barrass their  meeting.  But  just  before  the  second  bell  he 
came  quickly  up  the  steps  dressed  in  his  ordinary  clothes, 
and  Michael,  in  the  surging  corridor,  gripped  his  arm  for 
a  moment,  saying  he  would  wait  for  him  in  the  quarter. 

"Is  your  mater  fearfully  cut  up?"  he  asked  when  they 
had  met  and  were  strolling  together  along  the  ''gravel." 

"I  think  she  was,"  said  Alan.  "She's  going  up  to  Cobble 
Place  this  morning  to  see  Aunt  Maud." 

"I  wrote  to  her  last  night,"  said  Michael. 

"I  spent  nearly  all  yesterday  in  writing  to  her,"  said 
Alan.     "I  couldn't  think  of  anything  to  say.     Could  you?" 

"No,  I  couldn't  think  of  very  much,"  Michael  agreed. 
"It  seemed  so  unnecessary." 

"I  know,"  Alan  said.  "I'd  really  rather  have  come  to 
school." 

351 


352  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

"I  wish  you  had.  I  made  an  awful  fool  of  myself  in 
the  morning.  I  got  in  a  wax  with  Abercrombie  and  the 
chaps,  and  said  I'd  never  play  football  again." 

"Whatever    for?" 

''Oh,  because  I  didn't  think  they  appreciated  what  it 
meant  for  a  chap  like  your  Uncle  Kenneth  to  be  killed." 

"Do  you  mean  they  said  something  rotten?"  asked  Alan, 
flushing. 

"I  don't  think  you  would  have  thought  it  rotten.  In 
fact,  I  think  the  whole  row  was  my  fault.  But  they  seemed 
to  take  everything  for  granted.  That's  what  made  me  so 
wild." 

"Look  here,  we  can't  start  a  conversation  like  this  just 
before  school.  Are  you  going  home  to  dinner?"  Alan 
asked. 

"No,  I'll  have  dinner  down  in  the  tuck,"  said  Michael, 
"and  we  can  go  for  a  walk  afterwards,  if  you  like.  It's 
the  first  really  decent  day  we've  had  this  year." 

So  after  a  lunch  of  buns,  cheese-cakes,  fruit  pastilles, 
and  vanilla  biscuits,  eaten  in  the  noisy  half-light  of  the 
tuckshop,  accompanied  by  the  usual  storm  of  pellets, 
Michael  and  Alan  set  out  to  grapple  with  the  situation 
Michael  had  by  his  own  hasty  behavior  created. 

"The  chaps  seem  rather  sick  with  you,"  observed  Alan, 
as  they  strolled  arm-in-arm  across  the  school-ground  not 
yet  populous  with  games. 

"Well,  they  are  such  a  set  of  sheep,"  Michael  urged  in 
justification  of  himself. 

"I  thought  you  rather  liked  them." 

"I  did  at  first.  I  do  still  in  a  way.  I  do  when  nothing 
matters;  but  that  horrible  line  in  the  paper  did  matter 
most  awfully,  and  I  couldn't  stick  their  bleating.  You  see, 
you're  different.  You  just  say  nothing.  That's  all  right. 
But  these  fools  tried  to  say  something  and  couldn't.  I 
always  did  hate  people  who  tried  very  obviously.     That's 


ALAN  353 


why  I  like  you.     You're  so  casual  and  you  always  seem  to 
fit." 

"I  don't  talk,  because  I  know  if  I  opened  my  mouth  I 
should  make  an  ass  of  myself,"  said  Alan. 

* 'There  you  are,  that's  w^hat  I  say.  That's  why  it's 
possible  to  talk  to  you.    You  see  I'm  a  bit  mad." 

*'Shut  up,  you  ass,"  commanded  Alan,  smiling. 

**Oh,  not  very  mad.  And  I'm  not  complaining.  But  I 
am  a  little  bit  mad.     I  always  have  been." 

*'Why?  You  haven't  got  a  clot  on  your  brain,  have 
you?" 

"Oh,  Great  Scott,  no!     It's  purely  mental,  my  madness." 

"Well,   I   think  you're  talking  tosh,"   said  Alan   firmly. 

"If  j^ou  go  on  thinking  you're  mad,  you  will  be  mad, 
and  then  you'll  be  sorry.  So  shut  up  trying  to  horrify 
me,  because  if  you  really  were  mad  I  should  bar  you,"  he 
added  coolly. 

"All  right,"  said  Michael  a  little  subdued,  as  he  always 
was  by  Alan's  tranquil  snubs.  "All  right.  I'm  not  mad, 
but  I'm  excitable." 

"Well,  you  shouldn't  be,"  said  Alan. 

"I  can't  help  my  character,  can  I?"  Michael  demanded. 

"You're  not  a  girl,"  Alan  pointed  out. 

"Men  have  very  strong  emotions  often,"  Michael  ar- 
gued. 

"They  may  have  them,  but  they  don't  show  them.  Just 
lately  you've  been  holding  forth  about  the  rotten  way  in 
which  everybody  gets  hysterical  over  this  war.  And  now 
you're  getting  hysterical  over  yourself,  which  is  much 
worse." 

"Damn  you,  Alan,  if  I  didn't  like  you  so  much,  I 
shouldn't  listen  to  you,"  said  Michael  fiercely,  pausing. 

"Well,  if  I  didn't  like  you,  I  shouldn't  talk,"  answered 
Alan  simply. 

As  they  walked  on  again  in  silence  for  a  while,  Michael 


354  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

continually  tried  to  get  a  perspective  view  of  his  friend, 
puzzling  over  his  self-assurance,  w^hich  w^as  never  offensive, 
and  wondering  how  a  person  so  much  less  clever  than 
himself  could  possibly  make  him  feel  so  humble.  Alan 
was  good-looking  and  well  dressed;  he  was  essentially 
debonair;  he  was  certainly  in  appearance  the  most  attrac- 
tive boy  in  the  school.  It  always  gave  Michael  the  most 
acute  thrill  of  admiration  to  see  Alan  sw^inging  himself 
along  so  lithe  and  so  graceful.  It  made  him  want  to  go 
up  and  pat  Alan's  shoulder  and  say,  "You  fine  and  lovely 
creature,  go  on  walking  forever."  But  mere  good  looks 
were  not  enough  to  explain  the  influence  which  Alan 
wielded,  an  influence  which  had  steadily  increased  during 
the  period  of  their  greatest  devotion  to  each  other,  and 
had  never  really  ceased  during  the  period  of  their  compara- 
tive estrangement.  Yet,  if  Michael  looked  back  on  their 
joint  behavior,  it  had  always  been  he  who  apparently  led 
and  Alan  who  followed. 

"Do  you  know,  old  chap,"  said  Michael  suddenly,  "you're 
a  great  responsibility  to  me." 

"Thanks  very  much  and  all  that,"  Alan  answered,  with 
a  mocking  bow. 

"Have  you  ever  imagined  yourself  the  owner  of  some 
frightfully  famous  statue?"  Michael  went  on  earnestly. 

"Why,  have  you?"  Alan  countered,  with  his  familiar 
look  of  embarrassed  persiflage. 

Michael,  however,  kept  tight  hold  of  the  thread  that 
was  guiding  him  through  the  labyrinth  that  led  to  the 
arcana  of  Alan's  disposition. 

"You're  the  same  sort  of  responsibility,"  he  asserted. 
"I  always  feel  that  if  I  were  the  owner  of  the  Venus  of 
Milo,  though  I  could  move  her  about  all  over  the  place 
and  set  her  up  wherever  I  liked,  I  should  be  responsible 
to  her  in  some  way.     I  should  feel  she  was  looking  at  me, 


ALAN  355 


and  if  I  put  her  in  a  wrong  position  I  should  feel  ashamed 
of  myself  and  half  afraid  of  the  statue." 

"Are  you  trying  to  prove  you're  mad?"  Alan  inquired. 

*'Do  be  serious,"  Michael  begged,  "and  tell  me  if  you 
think  you  understand  what  I  mean.  Alan,  you  used  to 
discuss  everything  with  me  when  we  were  kids,  why  won't 
you  discuss  yourself  now?" 

Alan  looked  up  at  the  sky  for  a  moment,  blinking  in 
the  sun,  perhaps  to  hide  the  tremor  of  feeling  that  touched 
for  one  instant  the  corners  of  his  mouth.    Then  he  said: 

"Do  you  remember  years  ago,  when  we  were  at  East- 
bourne and  you  met  Uncle  Kenneth  for  the  first  time, 
he  told  me  at  dinner  not  to  be  a  showman?  I've  always 
remembered  that  remark  of  his,  and  I  think  it  applies  to 
oneself  showing  off  oneself  as  much  as  to  showing  ofE  other 
people.     I  think  that's  why  I'm  different  from  you." 

Michael  glanced  up  at  this. 

"You  can  be  damned  rude  when  you  like,"  he  mur- 
mured. 

"Well,  you  asked  me." 

"So  I'm  a  showman?"  said  Michael. 

"Oh,  for  heaven's  sake  don't  begin  to  worry  over  it. 
It  doesn't  make  any  odds  to  me  what  you  are.  I  don't 
think  it  ever  would,"  he  added  simply,  and  in  this  avowal 
was  all  that  Michael  craved  for.  Under  a  sudden  chill 
presentiment  that  before  long  he  would  test  this  friend 
of  his  to  the  last  red  throb  of  his  proud  heart,  Michael 
took  comfort  from  this  declaration  and  asked  no  more  for 
comprehension  or  sympathy.  Those  were  shifting  sands 
of  feeling  compared  with  this  rock-hewn  permanence  of 
Alan.  He  remembered  the  stones  upon  the  Berkshire 
downs,  the  stolid  unperceiving  eternal  stones.  Comparable 
to  them  alone  stood  Alan. 

They  had  turned  out  of  the  gates  of  the  school-ground 
by  now,  and  were  strolling  heedless  of  direction  through 


356  :  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

the  streets  of  West  Kensington  that  to  Michael  seemed 
all  at  once  strangely  alluring  with  their  display  of  a  sedate 
and  cosy  life.  He  could  not  recall  that  he  had  ever  before 
been  so  sensitive  to  the  atmosphere  of  sunlit  security  w^hich 
was  radiated  by  these  windows  with  their  visions  of  rosy 
babies  bobbing  and  laughing,  of  demure  and  saucy  maids, 
of  polished  bird-cages  and  pots  of  daffodils.  The  white 
steps  were  in  tune  with  the  billowy  clouds,  and  the  scarlet 
pillar-box  at  the  corner  had  a  friendly  human  smile.  It 
was  a  doll's-house  world,  whose  dainty  offer  of  intimate 
citizenship  refreshed  Michael's  imagination  like  a  child's 
picture-book. 

He  began  to  reflect  that  the  opinions  of  Abercrombie 
and  his  friends  round  the  hot-water  pipes  were  wrought 
out  in  such  surroundings  as  these,  and  he  arrived  gradually 
at  a  sort  of  compassion  for  them,  picturing  the  lives  of 
small  effort  that  would  inevitably  be  their  portion.  He 
perceived  that  they  would  bear  the  burden  of  existence  in 
the  future,  struggling  to  preserve  their  gentility  against  the 
envy  of  the  class  beneath  them  and  the  contempt  of  those 
above.  These  gay  little  houses,  half  of  whose  charm  lay  in 
their  similarity,  were  as  near  as  they  would  ever  come  to 
any  paradise  of  being.  Michael  had  experienced  many 
spasms  of  love  for  his  fellow-men,  and  now  in  one  of  these 
outbursts  he  suddenly  realized  himself  in  sympathy  with 
mediocrity. 

"Rather  jolly  round  here,"  said  Alan.  "I  suppose  a 
tremendous  lot  of  chaps  from  the  school  live  about  here. 
Funny  thing,  if  you  come  to  think  of  it.  Practically  every- 
body at  St.  James'  slides  into  a  little  house  like  this.  A 
few  go  into  the  Army ;  a  few  go  to  the  'Varsity.  But  this 
is  really  the  School." 

Alan  indicated  an  empty  perambulator  standing  outside 
one  of  the  houses.     'Tunny  thing  if  the  kid  that's  waiting 


ALAN  357 


for  should   be   Captain  of  the   School   in   another  eighteen 
years.     I  wouldn't  be  surprised." 

Alan  had  just  expressed  so  much  of  what  Michael  him- 
self was  feeling  that  he  felt  entitled  to  put  the  direct  ques- 
tion which,  a  moment  ago,  he  had  felt  shy  of  asking. 

"Do  you  feel  as  if  you  belonged  to  all  this?" 

"No,"  said  Alan  very  coolly. 

"Nor  do  I,"  Michael  echoed. 

"And  that's  why  it  was  rotten  of  you  to  give  yourself 
away  to  Abercrombie  and  the  other  chaps,"  Alan  went  on 
severely. 

"Yes,  I  think  it  was,"  Michael  agreed. 

Then  they  retraced  their  steps  unconsciously,  wandering 
along  silently  in  the  sunlight  toward  the  school.  Michael 
did  not  want  to  converse  because  he  was  too  much  elated 
by  this  walk,  and  the  satisfying  way  in  which  Alan  had 
lived  up  to  his  ideal  of  him.  He  began  to  weave  a  fine 
romance  of  himself  and  Alan  going  through  life  together 
in  a  lofty  self-sufficiency  from  which  they  would  condescend 
to  every  aspect  of  humanity.  He  was  not  sure  whether 
Alan  would  condescend  so  far  and  so  widely  as  himself, 
and  he  was  not  sure  whether  he  wanted  him  to,  whether 
it  would  not  always  be  a  relief  to  be  aware  of  Alan  as  a 
cold,  supernal  sanctuary  from  the  vulgar  struggles  in  which 
he  foresaw  his  own  frequent  immersion.  Meanwhile  he 
must  make  it  easy  for  Alan  by  apologizing  to  Abercrombie 
and  the  rest  for  his  ridiculous  passion  of  yesterday.  He 
did  not  wish  to  imperil  Alan's  superb  aloofness  by  involv- 
ing him  in  the  acrimonious  and  undignified  defence  of  a 
friend.  There  should  be  no  more  outbreaks.  So  much 
Michael  vowed  to  his  loyalty.  However,  the  apology  must 
be  made  quickly— if  possible  this  afternoon  before  school, 
and,  as  they  entered  the  school-ground  again,  Michael 
looked  up  at  the  clock  and  said: 


358  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"Do  you  mind  if  I  bunk  on?  I've  something  I  must 
do  before  the  bell  goes." 

Alan  shook  his  head. 

To  Abercrombie  and  the  other  immortals  Michael  came 
up  quickly  and  breathlessly. 

''I  say,  you  chaps,  I'm  sorry  I  made  such  an  ass  of  my- 
self yesterday;  I  felt  chippy  over  that  friend  of  mine  being 
killed." 

''That's  all  right,  old  bangabout,"  said  Abercrombie 
cordially,  and  the  chorus  guffawed  their  forgiveness.  They 
did  more.  They  called  him  "Bangs"  thereafter,  commem- 
orating, as  schoolboys  use,  with  an  affectionate  nickname 
their  esteem. 

The  next  day  a  letter  came  for  Michael  from  Mrs.  Ross, 
and  impressed  with  all  the  clarity  of  writing  much  of  what 
he  had  dimly  reached  out  for  in  his  friendship  with  Alan. 
He  first  read  the  letter  hurriedly  on  his  way  to  school  in 
the  morning;  but  he  read  it  a  second  and  third  time  along 
those  serene  and  intimate  streets  where  he  and  Alan  had 
walked  the  day  before. 

Cobble  Place^ 
March,   1900. 
My  dearest  Michael: 

You  and  Alan  are  the  only  people  to  whom  I  can  bear 
to  write  to-day.  I  am  grieving  most  for  my  young  son, 
because  he  will  have  to  grow  up  without  his  father's  splen- 
did example  always  before  him.  I  won't  write  of  my  own 
sorrow.     I  could  not. 

My  husband,  as  you  know,  was  very  devoted  to  you  and 
Alan,  and  he  had  been  quite  worried  (and  so  had  I)  that 
you  and  he  seemed  to  have  grown  away  from  one  another. 
It  was  a  moment  of  true  delight  to  him,  when  he  read  a 
long  letter  from  dear  old  Alan  describing  his  gladness  at 
playing  football  again  with  you.  Alan  expresses  himself 
much  less  eloquently  than  you  do,  but  he  is  as  deeply  fond 
of  you  as  I  know  you  are  of  him.  His  letters  are  full  of 
you  and  your  cleverness  and  popularity;    and  I  pray  that 


ALAN  359 


all  your  lives  you  will  pull  together  for  the  good.  Kenneth 
used  always  to  admire  you  both  so  much  for  your  ability 
to  "cope  with  a  situation."  He  was  shot,  as  you  know, 
leading  his  men  (who  adored  him)  into  action.  Ah,  how 
I  wish  he  could  lead  his  own  little  son  into  action.  You 
and  Alan  will  have  that  responsibility  now. 

It  is  sweet  of  you  to  thank  me  for  being  so  "stunning" 
to  you.  It  wasn't  very  difficult.  But  you  know  how  high 
my  hopes  have  always  been  and  always  will  be  for  you,  and 
I  know  that  you  will  never  disappoint  me.  There  may 
come  times  which,  with  your  restless,  sensitive  temperament, 
you  will  find  very  hard  to  bear.  Always  remember  that 
you  have  a  friend  in  me.  I  have  suffered  very  much,  and 
suffering  makes  the  heart  yearn  to  comfort  others.  Be  very 
chivalrous  always,  and  remember  that  of  all  your  ideals 
your  mother  should  be  the  highest.  I  hope  that  you'll  be 
able  to  come  and  stay  with  us  soon  after  Easter.  God 
bless  you,  dear  boy,  and  thank  you  very  much  for  your 
expression  of  the  sorrow  I  know  you  share  with  me. 

Your  loving 

Maud  Ross. 

I  wonder  if  you  remember  how  you  used  to  love  Don 
Quixote  as  a  child.  Will  you  always  be  a  Don  Quixote, 
however  much  people  may  laugh?  It  really  means  just 
being  a  gentleman. 


CHAPTER  XIII 
SENTIMENT 

BACK  once  more  upon  his  pedestal  in  the  frieze, 
Michael  devoted  himself  to  enjoying,  while  still 
they  were  important  to  his  life,  the  conversation 
and  opinions  of  the  immortals.  He  gave  up  worrying 
about  the  war  and  yielded  himself  entirely  either  to  the 
blandishments  of  his  seniority  in  the  school  or  of  dreams 
about  himself  dt  Oxford,  now  within  sight  of  attainment. 
Four  more  terms  of  school  would  set  him  free,  and  he  had 
ambitions  to  get  into  the  Fifteen  in  his  last  year.  He 
would  then  be  able  to  look  back  with  satisfaction  to  the 
accomplishment  of  something.  He  actually  threw  himself 
into  the  rowdiest  vanguard  of  Mafeking's  celebrators,  and 
accepted  the  occasion  as  an  excuse  to  make  a  noise  without 
being  compelled  to  make  the  noise  alone.  These  Baccha- 
nalia of  patriotism  were  very  amusing,  and  perhaps  it  was  a 
good  thing  for  the  populace  to  be  merry;  moreover,  since 
he  now  had  Alan  to  idealize,  he  could  aiford  to  let  his  high 
thoughts  of  England's  duty  and  England's  honor  become  a 
little  less  stringent. 

He  spent  much  time  with  Alan  in  discussing  Oxford  and 
in  building  up  a  most  elaborate  and  logical  scheme  of  their 
life  at  the  University.  He  w^as  anxious  that  Alan  should 
leave  the  classical  Lower  Sixth,  into  which  he  had  climbed 
somewhat  hardly,  and  come  to  join  him  in  the  leisure  of 
the  History  Sixth.     He  spoke  of   Strang  whose  captaincy 

360 


SENTIMENT  361 


of  cricket  shed  such  luster  on  the  form,  of  Terry  whose 
captaincy  of  football  next  year  would  shed  an  equal  luster. 
But  Alan,  having  found  the  journey  to  the  Lower  Sixth 
so  arduous,  was  disinclined  to  be  cheated  of  the  intellectual 
eminence  of  the  Upper  Sixth  which  had  been  his  Valhalla 
so  long. 

Michael  and  Alan  had  been  looking  forward  to  a  visit 
to  Cobble  Place  during  the  Easter  holidays;  but  Mrs. 
Fane  was  much  upset  by  the  idea  of  being  left  alone,  and 
Michael  had  to  decline  the  invitation,  which  was  a  great 
disappointment.  In  the  end  he  and  his  mother  went  to 
Bournemouth,  staying  rather  grandly  at  one  of  the  large 
hotels,  and  Michael  w^as  able  to  look  up  some  old  friends, 
including  Father  Moneypenny,  of  St.  Bartholomew's;  Mrs. 
Rewins,  their  landlady  of  three  years  back,  and  Mr.  Prout. 

The  passion-flower  at  Esdraelon  had  grown  considerably, 
but  that  was  the  only  thing  which  showed  any  signs  of 
expansion,  unless  Mr.  Prout's  engagement  to  be  married 
could  be  accepted  as  evidence  of  expansion.  Michael 
thought  it  had  a  contrary  effect,  and  whether  from  that 
cause  or  from  his  own  increased  age  he  found  poor  Prout 
sadly  dull.  It  was  depressing  to  hear  that  unpleasantness 
was  expected  at  the  Easter  vestry  that  year;  Michael  could 
not  recall  any  year  in  which  that  had  not  been  the  case. 
It  was  depressing  to  learn  that  the  People's  Churchwarden 
was  still  opposed  to  the  Assumption.  It  was  most  depress- 
ing of  all  to  be  informed  that  Prout  saw  no  prospect  of 
being  married  for  at  least  five  years.  Michael,  having 
failed  with  Prout,  tried  to  recapture  the  emotion  of  his 
first  religious  experience  at  St.  Bartholomew's.  But  the 
church,  which  had  once  seemed  so  inspiring,  now  struck 
him  as  dingily  and  poorly  designed,  without  any  of  the 
mystery  that  once  had  made  it  beautiful.  He  wondered  if 
everything  that  formerly  had  appealed  to  his  imagination 
were  going  to  turn  out  dross,  and  he  made  an  .expedition 
24 


362  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

to  Chrfstchurch  Priory  to  test  this  idea.  Here  he  was  re- 
lieved to  find  himself  able  to  recapture  the  perfect  thrill 
of  his  first  visit,  and  he  spent  a  rich  day  w^andering  between 
the  gray  church  and  the  watery  meadows  nearby,  about 
whose  plashy  levels  the  green  rushes  were  springing  up  in 
the  fleecy  April  weather. 

Michael  concluded  that  all  impermanent  emotions  of 
beauty  proved  that  it  was  merely  the  emotion  which  had 
created  an  illusion  of  beauty,  and  he  was  glad  to  have 
discovered  for  himself  a  touchstone  for  aesthetic  judgments 
in  the  future.  He  would  have  liked  to  see  Alan  in  the 
cloistral  glooms  of  the  Priory,  and  thought  how  he  would 
have  enhanced  with  his  own  eternity  of  classic  shape  the 
knights  and  ladies  praying  there.  Michael  sympathized 
with  the  trousered  boy  whom  Flaxman,  contrary  to  every 
canon,  might  almost  be  said  to  have  perpetrated.  He  felt 
slightly  muddled  between  classic  and  romantic  art,  and 
could  not  make  up  his  mind  whether  Flaxman's  attempt 
or  the  mediaeval  sculptor's  achievement  were  worthier  of 
admiration.  He  tried  to  apply  his  own  test,  and  came  to 
the  conclusion  that  Flaxman  was  really  all  wrong.  He 
decided  that  he  only  liked  the  trousered  boy  because  the 
figure  gave  him  sentimental  pleasure,  and  he  was  sure  that 
true  classical  art  was  not  sentimental.  Finally  he  got  him- 
self in  a  complete  muddle,  sitting  among  these  hollow  chan- 
tries and  pondering  art's  evaluations;  so  he  left  the  Priory 
behind  him  and  went  dreamily  through  the  water-meadows 
under  the  spell  of  a  simple  beauty  that  needed  no  analysis. 
Oxford  would  be  like  this,  he  thought;  a  place  of  bells 
and  singing  streams  and  towers  against  the  horizon. 

He  waited  by  a  stile  watching  the  sky,  of  which  sunset 
had  made  a  tranced  archipelago  set  in  a  tideless  sea.  The 
purple  islands  stood  out  more  and  more  distinct  against  the 
sheeted  gold  that  lapped  their  indentations;  then  in  a  few 
moments  the  gold  went  out  to  primrose,  the  purple  isles 


SENTIMENT  363 


were  gray  as  mice,  and  by  an  imperceptible  breath  of  time 
became  merged  in  a  luminous  green  that  held  the  young 
moon  led  downward  through  the  west  by  one  great  sul- 
phur star. 

This  speculation  of  the  sky  made  Michael  late  for  dinner, 
and  gave  his  mother  an  opportunity  to  complain  of  his 
daylong  desertion  of  her. 

"I  rather  wish  we  hadn't  come  to  Bournemouth,"  said 
Michael.  "I  think  it's  a  bad  place  for  us  to  choose  to 
come  together.  I  remember  last  time  we  stayed  here  you 
were  always  criticizing  me." 

**I  suppose  Bournemouth  must  have  a  bad  eflEect  on  you, 
dearest  boy,"  said  Mrs.  Fane  in  her  most  gentle,  most 
discouraging  voice. 

Michael  laughed  a  little  bitterly. 

"You're  wonderful  at  always  being  able  to  put  me  in 
the  wrong,"  he  said. 

"You're  sometimes  not  very  polite,  are  you,  nowadays? 
But  I  daresay  you'll  grow  out  of  this  curious  manner  you've 
lately  adopted  toward  me." 

"Was  I  rude?"  asked  Michael,  quickly  penitent. 
"I  think  you  were  rather  rude,  dear,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 
"Of  course,  I  don't  want  you  never  to  have  an  opinion  of 
your  own,  and  I  quite  realize  that  school  has  a  disastrous 
effect  on  manners,  but  you  didn't  apologize  very  gracefully 
for  being  late  for  dinner,  did  you,  dear?" 

"I'm  sorry.    I  won't  ever  be  again,"  said  Michael  shortly. 
Mrs.   Fane  sighed,   and  the  meal  progressed   in  silence. 
Michael,  however,  could  never  bear  to  sulk,  and  he  braced 
himself  to  be  pleasant. 

"You  ought  to  come  over  to  Christchurch,  mother. 
Shall  we  drive  over  one  day?" 

"Well,  I'm  not  very  fond  of  looking  at  churches,"  said 
Mrs.  Fane.  "But  if  you  want  to  go,  let  us.  I  always  like 
you  to  do  everything  you  want." 


364  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Michael  sighed  at  the  ingenuity  of  his  mother's  method, 
and  changed  the  subject  to  their  fellow-guests. 

"That's  rather  a  pretty  girl,  don't  you  think?" 

"Where,  dear?"  asked  Mrs.  Fane,  putting  up  her 
lorgnette  and  staring  hard  at  the  wife  of  a  clergyman 
sitting  across  the  room  from  their   table. 

"No,  no,  mother,"  said  Michael,  beaming  with  pleasure 
at  the  delightful  vagueness  of  his  mother  which  only  dis- 
tressed him  when  it  shrouded  his  own  sensations.  "The 
next  table — the  girl  in  pink." 

"Yes,  decidedly,"  said  Mrs.  Fane.  "But  dreadfully 
common.  1  can't  think  why  those  sort  of  people  come  to 
nice  hotels.  I  suppose  they  read  about  them  in  railway 
guides." 

"I  don't  think  she's  very  common,"  said  Michael. 

"Well,  dear,  you're  not  quite  at  the  best  age  for  judging, 
are  you?" 

"Hang  it,  mother,   I'm   seventeen." 

"It's  terrible  to  think  of,"  said  Mrs.  Fane.  "And  only 
such  a  little  while  ago  you  were  the  dearest  baby  boy. 
Then  Stella  must  be  sixteen,"  she  went  on.  "I  think  it's 
time  she  came  back  from  the  Continent." 

"What  about  her  first  concert?" 

"Oh,  I  must  think  a  lot  before  I  settle  when  that  is  to 
be." 

"But  Stella  is  counting  on  it  being  very  soon." 

"Dear  children,  you're  both  rather  impetuous,"  said  Mrs. 
Fane,  deprecating  with  the  softness  of  her  implied  rebuke 
the  quality,  and  in  Michael  at  any  rate  for  the  moment 
quenching  all  ardor. 

"I  wonder  if  it's  wise  to  let  a  girl  be  a  professional 
musician,"  she  continued.  "Dear  me,  children  are  a  great 
responsibility,  especially  when  one  is  alone." 

Here  was  an  opportunity  for  Michael  to  revive  the 
subject  of  his  father,  but  he  had  now  lost  the  cruel  frank- 


SENTIMENT  365 


ness  of  childhood  and  shrank  from  the  directness  of  the 
personal  encounter  such  a  topic  would  involve.  He  was 
seized  with  one  of  his  fits  of  shy  sensitiveness,  and  he  be- 
came suddenly  so  deeply  embarrassed  that  he  could  scarcely 
even  bring  himself  to  address  his  mother  as  "you."  He 
felt  that  he  must  go  away  by  himself  until  he  had  shaken 
off  this  uncomfortable  sensation.  He  actually  felt  a  kind 
of  immodesty  in  saying  "you"  to  his  mother,  as  if  in  saying 
so  much  he  was  trespassing  on  the  forbidden  confines  of 
her  individuality.  It  would  not  endure  for  more  than  an 
hour  or  more,  this  fear  of  approach,  this  hyperesthesia  of 
contact  and  communication.  Yet  not  for  anything  could 
he  kiss  her  good  night  and,  mumbling  a  few  bearish  ex- 
cuses, he  vanished  as  soon  as  dinner  was  over,  vowing  that 
he  would  cure  himself  of  this  mood  by  walking  through 
the  pine  trees  and  blowy  darkness  of  the  cliflfs. 

As  he  passed  through  the  hotel  lounge,  he  saw  the  good- 
looking  girl,  whom  his  mother  had  stigmatized  as  common, 
waiting  there  wrapped  up  in  a  feathery  cloak.  He  decided 
that  he  would  sit  down  and  observe  her  until  the  sister 
came  down.  He  wished  he  knew  this  girl,  since  it  would 
be  pleasant  after  dinner  to  stroll  out  either  upon  the  pier 
or  to  listen  to  the  music  in  the  Winter  Garden  in  such 
attractive  company.  Michael  fancied  that  the  girl,  as  she 
walked  slowly  up  and  down  the  lounge,  w^as  conscious  of 
his  glances,  and  he  felt  an  adventurous  excitement  at  his 
heart.  It  would  be  a  daring  and  delightful  novelty  to 
speak  to  her.  Then  the  sister  came  down,  and  the  two 
girls  went  out  through  the  swinging  doors  of  the  hotel, 
leaving  Michael  depressed  and  lonely.  Was  it  a  trick  of 
the  lamplight,  or  did  he  really  perceive  her  head  turn  out- 
side to  regard  him  for  a  moment? 

During  his  walk  along  the  clifiFs  Michael  played  with 
this  idea.  By  the  time  he  went  to  bed  his  mind  was  full 
of  this  girl,  and  it  was  certainly  thrilling  to  come  down  to 


266  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

breakfast  next  morning  and  see  what  blouse  she  was  wear- 
ing. Mrs.  Fane  always  had  breakfast  in  her  room,  so 
Michael  was  free  to  watch  this  new  interest  over  the 
cricket  matches  in  The  Sportsman.  He  grew  almost  jealous 
of  the  plates  and  forks  and  cups  which  existed  so  intimately 
upon  her  table,  and  he  derived  a  sentimental  pleasure  from 
the  thought  that  nothing  was  more  likely  than  that  to- 
morrow there  would  be  an  exchange  of  cups  between  his 
table  and  hers.  He  conceived  the  idea  of  chipping  a  piece 
out  of  his  own  cup  and  watching  every  morning  on  which 
table  it  would  be  laid,  until  it  reached  hero 

At  lunch  Michael,  as  nonchalantly  as  he  could  speak, 
asked  his  mother  whether  she  did  not  think  the  pretty  girl 
dressed  rather  well. 

"Very  provincial,"  Mrs.  Fane  judged. 

"But  prettily,  I  think,"  persisted  Michael.  "And  she 
wears  a  different  dress  every  day." 

"Do  you  want  to  know  her?"  asked  Mrs.  Fane. 

"Oh,  mother,  of  course  not,"  said  Michael,  blushing 
hotly. 

"I  daresay  they're  very  pleasant  people,"  Mrs.  Fane  re- 
marked. "I'll  speak  to  them  after  lunch,  and  tell  them  how 
anxious  you  are  to  make  their  acquaintance." 

"I  say,  mother,"  Michael  protested.  "Oh,  no,  don't, 
mother.     I  really  don't  want  to  know  them." 

Mrs.  Fane  smiled  at  him,  and  told  him  not  to  be  a  fool- 
ish boy.  After  lunch,  in  her  own  gracious  and  distinguished 
manner,  which  Michael  always  admired,  Mrs.  Fane  spoke 
to  the  two  sisters  and  presently  beckoned  to  Michael,  who 
crossed  the  room  feeling  rather  as  if  he  were  going  in  to 
bat  first  for  his  side. 

"I  don't  think  I  know  your  name,"  said  Mrs.  Fane  to 
the  elder  sister. 

"McDonnell — Norah  McDonnell,  and  this  is  my  sister 
Kathleen." 


SENTIMENT  367 


"Scotch?"    asked   Mrs.  Fane  vaguely   and  pleasantly. 

"No,  Irish,"  contradicted  the  younger  sister.  "At  least 
by  extraction.  McDonnell  is  an  Irish  name.  But  we  live 
in  Burton-on-Trent.  Father  and  mother  are  coming  down 
later  on." 

She  spoke  with  the  jerky  speech  of  the  Midlands,  and 
Michael  rather  wished  she  did  not  come  from  Burton-on- 
Trent,  not  on  his  own  account,  but  because  his  mother 
would  be  able  to  point  out  to  him  how  right  she  had  been 
about  their  provincialism. 

"Are  you  going  anywhere  this  evening?"  Michael  man- 
aged to  ask  at  last. 

"I  suppose  we  shall  go  on  the  pier.  We  usually  go  on 
the  pier.  Eh,  but  it's  rather  dull  in  Bournemouth.  I  like 
Llandudno  better.  Llandudno's  fine,"  said  the  elder  Miss 
McDonnell  with  fervor. 

Mrs.  Fane  came  to  the  rescue  of  an  awkward  conversa- 
tion by  asking  the  Misses  McDonnell  if  they  would  take 
pity  on  her  son  and  invite  him  to  accompany  them.  And 
so  it  was  arranged. 

"Happy,  Michael?"  asked  his  mother  when  the  ladies, 
with  many  smiles,  had  withdrawn  to  their  rooms. 

"Yes.  I'm  all  right,"  said  Michael.  "Only  I  rather  wish 
you  hadn't  asked  them  so  obviously.  It  made  me  feel 
rather  a  fool." 

"Dearest  boy,  they  were  delighted  at  the  idea  of  your 
company.  They  seem  quite  nice  people,  too.  Only,  as  I 
said,  very  provincial.     Older,  too,  than  I  thought  at  first." 

Michael  asked  how  old  his  mother  thought  they  were, 
and  she  supposed  them  to  be  about  twenty-seven  and  thirty. 
Michael  was  inclined  to  protest  against  this  high  estimate, 
but,  since  he  had  spoken  to  the  Misses  McDonnell,  he  felt 
that  after  all  his  mother  might  be  right. 

In  the  evening  his  new  friends  came  down  to  dinner 
much   enwrapped   in   feathers,   and   Michael   thought   that 


368  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Kathleen  looked  very  beautiful  in  the  crimson  lamplight 
of  the  dinner  table. 

"How  smart  you  are,  Michael,  to-night!"  said  Mrs. 
Fane. 

**Oh,  well,  I  thought  as  I'd  got  my  dinner  jacket  down 
here  I  might  as  well  put  it  on.  I  say,  mother,  I  think  I'll 
get  a  tail-coat.     Couldn't  I  have  one  made  here?" 

"Isn't  that  collar  rather  tight?"  asked  Mrs.  Fane 
anxiously.     "And  it  seems  dreadfully  tall." 

"I  like  tall  collars  with  evening  dress,"  said  Michael 
severely. 

"You  know  best,  dear,  but  you  look  perfectly  miserable." 

"It's  only  because  my  chin  is  a  bit  sore  after  shaving." 

"Do  you  have  to  shave  often?"  inquired  Mrs.  Fane, 
tenderly  horrified. 

"Rather  often,"  said  Michael.  "About  once  a  week 
now." 

"She  has  pretty  hands,  your  lady  love,"  said  Mrs.  Fane, 
suddenly  looking  across  to  the  McDonnells'  table. 

"I  say,  mother,  for  goodness'  sake  mind.  She'll  hear 
you,"  whispered  Michael. 

"Oh,  Michael  dear,  don't  be  so  foolishly  self-conscious." 

After  dinner  Michael  retired  to  his  room,  and  came  down 
again  smoking  a  cigarette. 

Mrs.  Fane  made  a  little  moue  of  surprise. 

"I  say,  mother,  don't  keep  on  calling  attention  to  every- 
thing I  do.    You  know  I've  smoked  for  ages." 

"Yes,  but  not  so  very  publicly,  dear  boy." 

"Well,  you  don't  mind,  do  you?  I  must  begin  some 
time,"  said  Michael. 

"Michael,  don't  be  cross  with  me.  You're  so  deliciously 
amusing,  and  so  much  too  nice  for  those  absurd  women," 
Mrs.  Fane  laughed. 

Just  then  the  Misses  McDonnell  appeared  on  the  stair- 


SENTIMENT  369 


case,  and  Michael  frowned  at  his  mother  not  to  say  any 
more  about  them. 

It  was  a  fairly  successful  evening.  The  elder  Miss 
McDonnell  bored  Michael  rather  with  a  long  account  of 
why  her  father  had  left  Ireland,  and  what  a  blow  it  had 
been  to  him  to  open  a  large  hotel  in  Burton-on-Trent.  He 
was  also  somewhat  fatigued  by  the  catalog  of  Mr. 
McDonnell's  virtues,  of  his  wit  and  courage  and  good 
looks  and  shrewdness. 

''He  has  a  really  old-fashioned  sense  of  humor,"  said 
Miss  McDonnell.  "But  then,  of  course,  he's  Irish.  He's 
accounted  quite  the  cleverest  man  in  Burton,  but  then, 
being  Irish,  that's  not  to  be  wondered  at." 

Michael  wished  she  would  not  say  "wondered"  as  if  it 
were  "wandered,"  and  indeed  he  was  beginning  to  think 
that  Miss  McDonnell  was  a  great  trial,  when  he  suddenly 
discovered  that  by  letting  his  arm  hang  very  loosely  from 
his  shoulder  it  was  possible  without  the  slightest  hint  of 
i'ntention  occasionally  to  touch  Kathleen's  hand  as  they 
walked  along.  The  careful  calculation  that  this  proceeding 
demanded  occupied  his  mind  so  fully  that  he  was  able  to 
give  mechanical  assents  to  Miss  McDonnell's  praise  of  her 
father,  and  apparently  at  the  same  time  impress  her  with 
his  own  intelligence. 

As  the  evening  progressed  Michael  slightly  increased  the 
number  of  times  he  tapped  Kathleen's  hand  with  his,  and 
after  about  an  hour's  promenade  of  the  pier  he  was  doing 
a  steady  three  taps  a  minute.  He  now  began  to  speculate 
whether  Kathleen  was  aware  of  these  taps,  and,  from  time 
to  time,  he  would  glance  round  at  her  over  his  shoulder,, 
hopeful  of  catching  her  eyes. 

"Are  you  admiring  my  sister's  brooch?"  asked  Miss 
McDonnell.     "Eh,  I  think  it's  grand.     Don't  you?" 

Kathleen  giggled  lightly  at  this,  and  asked  her  sister 
how  she  could,  and  then  Michael,  with  a  boldness  that  on 


370  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

reflection  made  him  catch  his  breath  at  the  imagination  of 
it,  said  that  while  he  was  admiring  Miss  Kathleen's  brooch 
he  was  admiring  her  eyes  still  more. 

"Oh,  Mr.  Fane.     How  can  you!"    exclaimed  Kathleen. 

"Well,  he's  got  good  taste,  I'm  sure,"  said  Miss  McDon- 
nell. "But,  there,  after  all,  what  can  you  expect  from  an 
Irish  girl?     All  Irish  girls  have  fine  eyes." 

When  Michael  went  to  bed  he  felt  that  on  the  whole 
he  had  acquitted  himself  that  first  evening  with  consider- 
able success,  and  as  he  fell  asleep  he  dreamed  triumphantly 
of  a  daring  to-morrow. 

It  was  an  April  day,  whose  deeps  of  azure  sky  made  the 
diverse  foliage  of  spring  burn  in  one  ardent  green.  Such  a 
day  spread  out  before  his  windows  set  Michael  on  fire  for 
its  commemoration,  and  he  made  up  his  mind  to  propose  a 
long  bicycling  expedition  to  the  two  Misses  McDonnell. 
He  wished  that  it  were  not  necessary  to  invite  the  elder 
sister,  but  not  even  this  April  morning  could  embolden 
him  so  far  as  to  ask  Kathleen  alone.  Mrs.  Fane  smilingly 
approved  of  his  proposal,  but  suggested  that  on  such  a 
warm  day  it  w^ould  be  wiser  not  to  start  until  after  lunch. 
So  it  was  arranged,  and  Michael  thoroughly  enjoyed  the 
consciousness  of  escorting  these  girls  out  of  Bournemouth 
on  their  trim  bicycles.  Indeed,  he  enjoyed  his  position  so 
much  that  he  continually  looked  in  the  shop  windows,  as 
they  rode  past,  to  observe  the  effect,  and  was  so  much 
charmed  by  the  result  that  he  crossed  in  front  of  Miss 
McDonnell  and  upset  her  and  her  bicycle  in  the  middle 
of  the  town. 

"Eh,  that's  a  nuisance,"  said  Miss  McDonnell,  surveying 
bent  handlebars  and  inner  tire  swelling  like  a  toy  balloon 
along  the  rim.  "That  was  quite  a  mishap,"  she  added, 
shaking  the  dust  from  her  skirt. 

Michael  was   in   despair   over   his   clumsiness,   especially 


SENTIMENT  371 


when  Miss  Kathleen  McDonnell  remarked  that  there  went 
the  ride  she'd  been  looking  forward  to  all  day. 

"Well,  you  two  go  on  and  I'll  walk  back,"  Miss 
McDonnell  offered. 

"Oh,  but  I  can  easily  hire  another  machine,"  said 
Michael. 

"No.     I'll  go  back.     I've  grazed  my  knee  a  bit  badly." 

Michael  was  so  much  perturbed  to  hear  this  that  without 
thinking  he  anxiously  asked  to  be  allowed  to  look,  and 
wished  that  the  drain  by  which  he  was  standing  would 
swallow  him  up  when  he  realized  by  Kathleen's  giggling 
what  he  had  said. 

"It's  all  right,"  said  Miss  McDonnell  kindly.  "There's 
no  need  to  worry.     I  hope  you'll  have  a  pleasant  ride." 

"I  say,  it's  really  awfully  ripping  of  you  to  be  so  jolly 
good-tempered  about  it,"  Michael  exclaimed.  "Are  you 
sure  I  can't  do  anything?" 

"No,  you  can  just  put  my  bicycle  in  the  shop  along 
there,  and  I'll  take  the  tram  back.  Mind  and  enjoy  your- 
selves, and  don't  be  late." 

The  equable  Miss  McDonnell  then  left  her  sister  and 
Michael  to  their  own  devices. 

They  rode  along  in  alert  silence  until  they  left  Brank- 
some  behind  them  and  came  into  hedgerows,  where  an 
insect  earned  Michael's  cordial  gratitude  by  invading  his 
eye.  He  jumped  off  his  bicycle  immediately  and  called  for 
Kathleen's  aid,  and  as  he  stood  in  the  quiet  lane,  with  the 
girl's  face  close  to  his  and  her  hand  brushing  his  cheeks, 
Michael  felt  himself  to  be  indeed  a  favorite  of  fortune. 

"There  it  is,  Mr.  Fane,"  said  Miss  Kathleen  McDonnell. 
And,  though  he  tried  to  be  sceptical  for  a  while  of  the 
insect's  discovery,  he  was  bound  to  admit  the  evidence  of 
the  handkerchief. 

"Thanks  awfully,"  said  Michael.     "And,  I  say,  I  wish 


372  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

you  wouldn't  call  me  Mr.  Fane.     You  know  my  Christian 
name." 

"Oh,  but  I'd  feel  shy  to  call  you  Michael,"  said  Miss 
McDonnell. 

"Not  if  I  called  you  Kathleen,"  Michael  suggested,  and 
felt  inclined  to  shake  his  own  hand  in  congratulation  of 
his  own  magnificent  daring. 

"Well,  I  must  say  one  thing.  You  don't  waste  much 
time.  I  think  you're  a  bit  of  a  flirt,  you  know,"  said  Kath- 
leen. 

"A  flirt,"  Michael  echoed.  "Oh,  I  say,  do  you  really 
think  so?" 

"I'm  afraid  I  do,"  murmured  Kathleen.  "Shall  we  go 
on  again?" 

They  rode  along  in  renewed  silence  for  several  miles, 
and  then  they  suddenly  came  upon  Poole  Harbor  lying 
below  them,  washed  in  the  tremulous  golden  airs  of  the 
afternoon. 

"I  say,  how  ripping!"  cried  Michael,  leaping  from  his 
machine  and  flinging  it  away  from  him  against  a  bank  of 
vivid  grass.     "We  must  sit  down  here  for  a  bit." 

"It  is  pretty,"  said  Kathleen.  "It's  almost  like  a  pic- 
ture." 

"I'm  glad  you're  fond  of  beautiful  things,"  said  Michael 
earnestly. 

"Well,  one  can't  help  it,  can  one?"    sighed  Kathleen. 

"Some  people  can,"  said  Michael  darkly.  "There's 
rather  a  good  place  to  sit  over  there,"  he  added,  pointing 
to  a  broken  gate  that  marked  the  entrance  to  an  oak  wood, 
and  he  faintly  touched  the  sleeve  of  Kathleen's  blouse  to 
guide  her  toward  the  chosen  spot. 

Then  they  sat  leaning  against  the  gate,  she  idly  plucking 
sun-faded  primroses,  he  brooding  upon  the  nearness  of  her 
hand.  In  such  universal  placidity  it  could  not  be  wrong 
to    hold    that    hand    wasting    itself    amid    small    energies. 


SENTIMENT  373 


Without  looking  into  her  eyes,  without  turning  his  gaze 
from  the  great  tranquil  water  before  him,  Michael  took 
her  hand  in  his  so  lightly  that  save  for  the  pulsing  of  his 
heart  he  scarcely  knew  he  held  it.  So  he  sat  breathless, 
enduring  pins  and  needles,  tolerating  the  uncertain  pil- 
grimage of  ants  rather  than  move  an  inch  and  break  the 
yielding  spell  which  made  her  his. 

"Are  you  holding  my  hand?"  she  asked,  after  they  had 
sat  a  long  while  pensively. 

"I  suppose  I  am,"  said  Michael.  Then  he  turned  and, 
with  full-blooded  cheeks  and  swimming  eyes,  met  un- 
abashed Kathleen's  demure  and  faintly  mocking  glance. 

"Do  you  think  you  ought  to?"    she  inquired. 

"I  haven't  thought  anything  about  that,"  said  Michael. 
"I  simply  thought  I  wanted  to." 

"You're  rather  old  for  your  age,"  she  went  on,  with  an 
inflection  of  teasing  surprise  in  her  soft  voice.  "How  old 
are  you?" 

"Seventeen,"  said  Michael  simply. 

"Goodness!"  cried  Kathleen,  withdrawing  her  hand 
suddenly.     "And  I  wonder  how  old  you  think  I  am?" 

"I  suppose  you're  about  twenty-five." 

Kathleen  got  up  and  said  in  a  brisk  voice  that  destroyed 
all  Michael's  bravery,  "Come,  let's  be  getting  back.  Norah 
will  be  thinking  I'm  lost." 

Just  when  they  were  nearing  the  outskirts  of  Branksome, 
Kathleen  dismounted  suddenly  and  said: 

"I  suppose  you'll  be  surprised  when  I  tell  you  I'm  en- 
gaged to  be  married?" 

"Are  you?"  faltered  Michael;  and  the  road  swam  be- 
fore him. 

"At  least  I'm  only  engaged  secretly,  because  my  fiance 
is  poor.  He's  coming  down  soon.  I'd  like  you  to  meet 
him." 


374  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

"I  should  like  to  meet  him  very  much,"  said  Michael 
politely. 

"You  won't  tell  anybody  what  I've  told  you?" 

''Good  lord,  no.  Perhaps  I  might  be  of  some  use,"  said 
Michael.     **You  know,  in  arranging  meetings." 

"Eh,  you're  a  nice  boy,"  exclaimed  Kathleen  suddenly. 

And  Michael  was  not  perfectly  sure  whether  he  thought 
himself  a  hero  or  a  martyr. 

Mrs.  Fane  was  very  much  diverted  by  Michael's  account 
of  Miss  McDonnell's  accident,  and  teased  him  gaily  about 
Kathleen.  Michael  would  assume  an  expression  of  mystery, 
as  if  indeed  he  had  been  entrusted  with  the  dark  secrets 
of  a  young  woman's  mind;  but  the  more  mysterious  he 
looked  the  more  his  mother  laughed.  In  his  own  heart 
he  cultivated  assiduously  his  devotion,  and  regretted  most 
poignantly  that  each  new  blouse  and  each  chosen  evening 
dress  was  not  for  him.  He  used  to  watch  Kathleen  at 
dinner,  and  depress  himself  with  the  imagination  of  her 
spirit  roaming  out  over  the  broad  Midlands  to  meet  her 
lover.  He  never  made  the  effort  to  conjure  up  the  lover, 
but  preferred  to  picture  him  and  Kathleen  gathering 
like  vague  shapes  upon  the  immeasurable  territories  of 
the  soul. 

Then  one  morning  Kathleen  took  him  aside  after  break- 
fast to  question  his  steadfastness. 

"Were  you  in  earnest  about  what  you  said?'*    she  asked. 

"Of  course  I  was,"  Michael  affirmed. 

"He's  come  down.  He's  staying  in  rooms.  Why  don't 
you  ask  me  to  go  out  for  a  bicycle  ride?" 

"Well,  will  you?"    Michael  dutifully  invited. 

"I'm  so  excited,"  said  Kathleen,  fluttering  off  to  tell 
her  sister  of  this  engagement  to  go  riding  with   Michael. 

In  about  half  an  hour  they  stood  outside  the  small  red 
brick  house  which  cabined  the  bold  spirit  of  Michael's 
depressed  fancies. 


SENTIMENT  375 


"You'll  come  in  and  say  'how  do  you  do'?"  suggested 
Kathleen. 

"I  suppose  I'd  better,"  Michael  agreed. 

They  entered  together  the  little  efflorescent  parlor  of 
the  house. 

''This  is  my  fiance — Mr.  Walter  Trimble,"  Kathleen 
proudly  announced. 

"Pleased  to  meet  you,"  said  Mr.  Trimble.  "Kath  tells 
me  you're  on  to  do  us  a  good  turn." 

Michael  looked  at  Mr.  Trimble,  resolutely  anxious  to 
find  in  him  the  creator  of  Kathleen's  noble  destiny.  He 
saw  a  thick-set  young  man  in  a  splendidly  fitting,  but  ill- 
cut  blue  serge  suit;  he  saw  a  dark  mustache  of  silky  lux- 
uriance growing  amid  regular  features;  in  fact,  he  saw 
someone  that  might  have  stepped  from  one  of  the  grandiose 
frames  of  that  efflorescent  little  room.  But  he  was  Kath- 
leen's choice,  and  Michael  refused  to  let  himself  feel  at  all 
disappointed. 

"I  think  it's  bad  luck  not  to  be  able  to  marry,  if  one 
wants  to,"  said  Michael  deeply. 

"You're  right,"  Mr.  Trimble  agreed.  "That's  why  I 
want  Kath  here  to  marry  me  first  and  tell  her  dad  after- 
wards." 

"I  only  wish  I  dared,"  sighed  Kathleen.  "Well,  if 
we're  going  to  have  our  walk  we'd  better  be  getting  along. 
Will  I  meet  you  by  the  side  gate  into  the  Winter  Garden 
at  a  quarter  to  one?" 

"Right-o,"  said  Michael. 

"I  wonder  if  you'd  lend  Mr.  Trimble  your  bicycle?" 

"Of  course,"  said  Michael. 

"Because  we  could  get  out  of  the  town  a  bit,"  sug- 
gested Kathleen.     "And  that's  always  pleasanter." 

Michael  spent  a  dull  morning  in  wandering  about 
Bournemouth,  while  Kathleen  and  her  Trimble  probably 
rode  along  the  same  road  he  and  she  had  gone  a  few  days 


376  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

back.  He  tried  to  console  himself  with  thoughts  of  self- 
sacrifice,  and  he  took  a  morbid  delight  in  the  imagination 
of  the  pleasure  he  had  made  possible  for  others.  But  un- 
deniably his  own  morning  was  dreary,  and  not  even  could 
Swinburne's  canorous  Triumph  of  Time  do  much  more 
than  echo  somewhat  sadly  through  the  resonant  emptiness 
of  his  self-constructed  prison,  whose  windows  opened  on  to 
a  sentimental  if  circumscribed  view  of  unattainable  sweet- 
ness. 

Michael  sat  on  a  bench  in  a  sophisticated  pine  grove  and, 
having  lighted  a  cigarette,  put  out  the  match  with  his 
sighing  exhalation  of  "O  love,  my  love,  and  no  love  for 
me."  It  was  wonderful  to  Michael  how  perfectly  Swin- 
burne expressed  his  despair.  "O  love,  my  love,  had  you 
loved  but  me."  And  why  had  she  not  loved  him?  Why 
did  she  prefer  Trimble?  Did  Trimble  ever  read  Swin- 
burne? Could  Trimble  sit  like  this  smoking  calmly  a 
cigarette  and  breathing  out  deathless  lines  of  love's  despair? 
Michael  began  to  feel  a  little  sorry  for  Kathleen,  almost 
as  sorry  for  her  as  he  felt  for  himself.  Soon  the  Easter 
holidays  would  be  over,  and  he  would  go  back  to  school. 
He  began  to  wonder  whether  he  would  wear  the  marks  of 
suffering  on  his  countenance,  and  whether  his  friends  would 
eye  him  curiously,  asking  themselves  in  whispers  what  man 
this  was  that  came  among  them  with  so  sad  and  noble  an 
expression  of  resignation.  As  Michael  thought  of  Trimble 
and  Kathleen  meeting  in  Burton-on-Trent  and  daily  grow- 
ing nearer  to  each  other  in  love,  he  became  certain  that  his 
grief  would  indeed  be  manifest.  He  pictured  himself  sit- 
ting in  the  sunlit  serene  class-room  of  the  History  Sixth,  a 
listless  figure  of  despair,  an  object  of  wondering,  whisper- 
ing compassion.  And  so  his  life  would  lose  itself  in  a 
monotone  of  discontent.  Gray  distances  of  time  presented 
themselves  to  him  with  a  terrible  menace  of  loneliness;  the 
future  was  worse  than  ever,  a  barren  waste  whose  horizon 


SENTIMENT  377 


would  never  darken  to  the  silhouette  of  Kathleen  coming 
toward  him  with  open  arms.  Never  would  he  hold  her 
hand  again;  never  would  he  touch  those  lips  at  all;  never 
would  he  even  know  what  dresses  she  wore  in  summer. 
"O  love,  my  love,  and  no  love  for  me." 

When  Michael  met  Kathleen  by  the  side  gate  of  the 
Winter  Gardens,  and  received  his  bicycle  back  from  Trim- 
ble, he  suddenly  wondered  whether  Kathleen  had  told  her 
betrothed  that  another  had  held  her  hand.  Michael  rather 
hoped  she  had,  and  that  the  news  of  it  had  made  Trimble 
jealous.  Trimble,  however,  seemed  particularly  pleased 
with  himself,  and  invited  Michael  to  spend  the  afternoon 
with  him,  which  Michael  promised  to  do,  if  his  mother  did 
not  want  his  com.pany. 

''Well,  did  you  have  a  decent  morning?"  Michael  in- 
quired of  Kathleen,  as  together  they  rode  toward  their 
hotel. 

"Oh,  we  had  a  grand  time;  we  sat  down  where  you  and 
me  sat  the  other  day." 

Michael  nearly  mounted  the  pavement  at  this  news,  and 
looked  very  gloomy. 

"What's  the  matter?"  Kathleen  pursued.  "You're  not 
put  out,  are  you?" 

"Oh,  no,  not  at  all,"  said  Michael  sardonically.  "All 
the  same,  I  think  you  might  have  turned  off  and  gone  an- 
other road.  I  sat  and  thought  of  you  all  the  morning. 
But  I  don't  mind  really,"  he  added,  remembering  that  at 
any  rate  for  Kathleen  he  must  remain  that  chivalrous  and 
selfless  being  which  had  been  created  by  the  loan  of  a 
bicycle.  "I'm  glad  you  enjoyed  yourself.  I  always  want 
you  to  be  happy.     All  my  life  I  shall  want  that." 

Michael  was  surprised  to  find  how  much  more  eloquent 

he  was  in  the  throes  of  disappointment  than  he  had  ever 

been  through  the  prompting  of  passion.      He  wished   that 

the  hotel  were  not  already  in  sight,   for  he  felt   that  he 

25 


378  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

could  easily  say  much  more  about  his  renunciation,  and 
indeed  he  made  up  his  mind  to  do  so  at  the  first  oppor- 
tunity. In  the  afternoon  he  told  his  mother  he  was  going 
to  pay  a  visit  to  Father  Moneypenny.  He  did  not  tell  her 
about  Trimble,  because  he  feared  her  teasing;  although 
he  tried  to  deceive  himself  that  the  lie  was  due  to  his 
loyalty  to  Kathleen. 

''What  shall  we  do?"  asked  Trimble.  "Shall  we  toddle 
round  to  the  Shades  and  have  a  drink?" 

"Just  as  you  like,"  Michael  said. 

"Well,  I'm  on  for  a  drink.  It's  easier  to  talk  down  at 
the  Shades  than  in  here." 

Michael  wondered  why,  but  he  accepted  a  cigar,  and 
with  Trimble  sought  the  speech-compelling  Shades. 

"It's  like  this,"  Trimble  began,  when  they  were  seated 
on  the  worn  leather  of  the  corner  lounge.  "I  took  a  fancy 
to  you  right  off.  Eh,  I'm  from  the  North,  and  I  may  be  a 
bit  blunt,  but  by  gum  I  liked  you,  and  that's  how  it  is. 
Yes.  I'm  going  to  talk  to  you  the  same  as  I  might  to  my 
own  brother,  only  I  haven't  got  one." 

Michael  looked  a  little  apprehensive  of  the  sack  of  con- 
fidences that  would  presently  be  emptied  over  his  head,  and, 
seeking  perhaps  to  turn  Trimble  from  his  intention,  asked 
him  to  guess  his  age. 

"Well,  I  suppose  you're  anything  from  twenty-two  to 
twenty-three." 

Michael  choked  over  his  lemon-and-dash  before  he  an- 
nounced grimly  that  he  was  seventeen. 

"Get  out,"  said  Trimble  sceptically.  "You're  more  than 
that.  Seventeen?  Eh,  I  wouldn't  have  thought  it.  Never 
mind,  I  said  I  was  going  to  tell  you.  And  by  gum  I  will, 
if  you  say  next  you  haven't  been  weaned." 

Michael  resented  the  freedom  of  this  expression  and 
knitted  his  eyebrows  in  momentary  distaste. 

"It's  like  this,"  Mr.  Trimble  began  again,  "I  made  up 


SENTIMENT  379 


my  mind  to-day  that  Kath's  the  lass  for  me.  Now  am  I 
right?    That's  what  I  want  to  ask  you.    Am  I  right?" 

"I  suppose  if  you're  in  love  with  her  and  she's  in  love 
with  you,  yes,"  said  Michael. 

"Well,  she  is.  Now  you  wouldn't  think  she  was  passion- 
ate, would  you?  You'd  say  she  was  a  bit  of  ice,  wouldn't 
you?  Well,  by  gum  I  tell  you,  lad,  she's  a  furnace. 
Would  you  believe  that?"  Mr.  Trimble  leaned  back  tri- 
umphantly. 

Michael  did  not  know  what  comment  to  make  on  this 
information,   and  took  another  sip  of   his  lemon-and-dash. 

"Well,  now  what  I  say  is — and  I'm  not  a  chap  who's 
flung  round  a  great  deal  with  the  girls — what  I  say  is," 
Trimble  went  on,  banging  the  marble  table  before  him, 
"it's  not  fair  on  a  lass  to  play  around  like  this,  and  so  I've 
made  up  my  mind  to  marry  her.  Am  I  right?  By  gum, 
lad,  I  know  I'm  right." 

"I  think  you  are,"  said  Michael  solemnly.  "And  I  think 
you're  awfully  lucky." 

"Lucky?"  echoed  Trimble.  "I'm  lucky  enough,  if  it 
wasn't  for  her  domned  old  father.  The  lass  is  fine,  but 
him — well,  if  I  was  to  tell  you  what  he  is,  you'd  say  I  was 
using  language.  So  it's  like  this.  I  want  Kath  to  marry 
me  down  here.  I'll  get  the  license.  I've  saved  up  a  hun- 
dred pounds.  I'm  earning  two  hundred  a  year  now.  Am 
I  right?" 

"Perfectly  right,"  said  Michael  earnestly,  who,  now  that 
Trimble  was  showing  himself  to  possess  real  fervor  of  soul, 
was  ready  to  support  him,  even  at  the  cost  of  his  own 
suffering.  He  envied  Trimble  his  freedom  from  the  tram- 
mels of  education,  which  for  such  a  long  while  would  pre- 
vent himself  from  taking  such  a  step  as  marriage  by  license. 
Indeed,  Michael  scarcely  thought  he  ever  would  take  such 
a  step  now,  since  it  was  unlikely  that  anyone  with  Kath- 
leen's attraction  would  lure  him  on  to  such  a  deed. 


38o  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Trimble's  determination  certainly  went  a  long  way  to 
excuse  the  failings  of  his  outer  person  in  Michael's  eyes, 
and,  indeed,  as  he  pledged  him  a  stirrup-cup  of  lemon-and- 
dash,  Trimble  and  Young  Lochinvar  were  not  seriously 
distinct  in  Michael's  imaginative  anticipation  of  the  exploit. 

So  all  day  and  every  day  for  ten  days  Michael  presum- 
ably spent  his  time  with  Kathleen,  notwithstanding  Mrs. 
Fane's  tenderly  malicious  teasing,  notwithstanding  the  elder 
Miss  McDonnell's  growing  chill,  and  notwithstanding  sev- 
eral very  pointed  questions  from  the  interfering  old  spin- 
sters and  knitters  in  the  sun  of  the  hotel  gardens.  That 
actually  he  spent  his  time  alone  in  w^atching  slow-handed 
clocks  creep  on  toward  a  quarter-to-one  or  a  quarter-to-five 
or  a  quarter-to-seven,  filled  Michael  daily  more  full  with 
the  spiritual  rewards  of  his  sacrifice.  He  had  never  known 
before  the  luxury  of  grief,  and  he  had  no  idea  w^hat  a 
variety  of  becoming  attitudes  could  be  wrought  of  sadness, 
and  not  merely  attitudes,  but  veritable  dramas.  One  of 
the  most  heroically  poignant  of  these  was  founded  on  the 
moment  when  Kathleen  should  ask  him  to  be  godfather  to 
her  first-born.  "No,  no,"  Michael  would  exclaim.  "Don't 
ask  me  to  do  that.  I  have  suffered  enough."  And  Kath- 
leen would  remorsefully  and  silently  steal  from  the  dusky 
room  a-flicker  w^ith  sad  firelight,  leaving  Michael  a  prey 
to  his  own  noble  thoughts.  There  was  another  drama 
scarcely  less  moving,  in  which  the  first-born  died,  and 
IMichael,  on  hearing  the  news,  took  the  night  express  to 
Burton  in  order  to  speak  words  of  hope  above  the  little 
duplicate  of  Trimble  now  forever  still  in  his  cradle.  Some- 
times in  the  more  expansive  moments  of  Michael's  celibacy 
Trimble  and  Kathleen  would  lose  all  their  mone)^  and 
Michael,  again  taking  the  night  express  to  Burton-on- 
Trent,  would  offer  to  adopt  about  half  a  dozen  duplicates 
of  Trimble. 

Finally    the    morning    of    the    marriage    arrived,     and 


SENTIMENT  381 


Michael,  feeling  that  this  was  an  excellent  opportunity  to 
have  the  first  of  his  dramas  staged  in  reality,  declined  to  be 
present.  His  refusal  was  a  little  less  dramatic  than  he  had 
intended,  because  Kathleen  was  too  much  excited  by  her 
own  reckless  behavior  to  act  up.  While  Michael  waited 
for  the  ceremony's  conclusion,  he  began  a  poem  called  "Re- 
nunciation." Unfortunately  the  marriage  service  was  very 
much  faster  than  his  Muse,  and  he  never  got  further  than 
half  the  opening  line,  "If  I  renounce."  Michael,  how^ever, 
ascribed  his  failure  to  a  little  girl  who  would  persist  in 
bouncing  a  tennis  ball  near  his  seat  in  the  gardens. 

The  wedding  was  only  concluded  just  in  time,  because 
Mr.  and  Mrs.  McDonnell  arrived  on  the  following  day 
and  Michael's  expeditions  with  Kathleen  were  immediately 
forbidden.  Possibly  the  equable  Miss  McDonnell  had  been 
faintly  alarmed  for  her  sister's  good  name.  At  any  rate 
she  had  certainly  been  annoyed  by  her  continuous  neglect. 

Michael,  however,  had  a  long  interview  with  Trimble, 
and  managed  to  warn  Kathleen  that  her  husband  was 
going  to  present  himself  after  dinner.  Trimble  and  he  had 
thought  this  was  more  likely  to  suit  Mr.  McDonnell's 
digestion  than  an  after-breakfast  confession.  Michael  ex- 
pressed himself  perfectly  willing  to  take  all  the  blame,  and 
privately  made  up  his  mind  that,  if  Mr.  McDonnell  tried 
to  be  "too  funny,"  he  would  summ.on  his  mother  to  "polish 
him  off"  with  the  vision  of  her  manifest  superiority. 

Somewhat  to  Michael's  chagrin  his  share  in  the  matter 
was  overlooked  by  Mr.  McDonnell,  and  the  oration  he 
had  prepared  to  quell  the  long-lipped  Irish  father  was  never 
delivered.  Whatever  scenes  of  domestic  strife  occurred 
occurred  without  Michael's  assistance,  and  he  was  not  a 
little  dismayed  to  be  told  by  Kathleen  in  the  morning  that 
all  had  passed  off  well,  but  that  in  the  circumstances  her 
father  had  thought  they  had  better  leave  Bournemouth  at 
once. 


382  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"You're  going?"  stammered  Michael. 

'Yes.  We  must  be  getting  back.  It's  all  been  so  sudden, 
and  Walter's  coming  into  the  business,  and  eh,  I'm  as 
happ3^  as  the  day  is  long." 

Michael  watched  them  all  depart,  and,  after  a  few  brave 
good-byes  and  three  flutters  from  Kathleen's  handkerchief, 
turned  sadly  back  into  the  large,  unfriendly  hotel.  He 
knew  the  number  of  Kathleen's  room,  and,  in  an  access  of 
despair  that  was,  however,  not  so  overwhelming  as  to  pre- 
clude all  self-consciousness,  he  wandered  down  the  corridor 
and  peeped  into  the  late  haunt  of  his  love.  The  floor  was 
littered  with  tissue  paper,  broken  cardboard  boxes,  empty 
toilet  bottles,  and  all  the  disarray  of  departure.  Michael 
caught  his  breath  at  the  sudden  revelation  of  this  aban- 
doned room's  appeal.  Here  was  the  end  of  Kathleen's 
maidenhood;  here  still  lingered  the  allurement  of  her 
presence;  but  Trimble  could  never  see  this  last  virginal 
abode,  this  elusive  shrine  that  Michael  wished  he  could 
hire  for  sentimental  meditations.  Along  the  corridor  came 
the  sound  of  a  dustpan.  He  looked  round  hastily  for  one 
souvenir  of  Kathleen,  and  perceived  still  moist  from  her 
last  quick  ablution  a  piece  of  soap.  He  seized  it  quickly 
and  surrendered  the  room  to  the  destructive  personality  of 
the  housemaid. 

"Well,  dear,"  asked  Mrs.  Fane  at  lunch,  "did  your  lady- 
love give  you  anything  to  commemorate  your  help?  Dar- 
ling Michael,  you  must  have  made  a  delicious  knight- 
errant." 

"Oh,  no,  she  didn't  give  me  anything,"  said  Michael. 
"Why  should  she?" 

Then  he  blushed,  thinking  of  the  soap  that  was  even 
now  enshrined  in  a  drawer  and  scenting  his  handkerchiefs 
and  ties.  He  wondered  if  Alan  would  understand  the 
imperishable  effluence  ■  from   that  slim  cenotaph  of  soap. 


CHAPTER  XIV 
ARABESQUE 

IN  the  air  of  the  Easter  holidays  that  year  there  must 
have  been  something  unusually  amorous  even  for 
April,  for  w^hen  Michael  came  back  to  school  he 
found  that  most  of  his  friends  and  contemporaries  had  been 
wounded  by  love's  darts.  Alan,  to  be  sure,  returned  un- 
scathed, but  as  he  had  been  resting  in  the  comparatively 
cloistral  seclusion  of  Cobble  Place,  Michael  did  not  count 
his  v^'hole  heart  much  honor  to  anything  except  his  lack  of 
opportunity.  Everybody  else  had  come  back  in  possession 
of  girls;  some  even  had  acquired  photographs.  There  was 
talk  of  gloves  and  handkerchiefs,  of  flowers  and  fans,  but 
nobody,  as  far  as  Michael  could  cautiously  ascertain,  had 
thought  of  soap;  and  he  congratulated  himself  upon  his 
relic.  Also,  apparently,  all  his  friends  in  their  pursuit  of 
Eastertide  nymphs  had  been  successful,  and  he  began  to 
take  credit  to  himself  for  being  unlucky.  His  refusal  (to 
this  already  had  come  Kathleen's  suddenly  withdrawn 
hand)  gave  him  a  peculiar  interest,  and  those  of  his  friends 
in  whom  he  confided  looked  at  him  with  awe,  and  listened 
respectfully  to  his  legend  of  despair. 

Beneath  the  hawthorns  on  the  golden  afternoons  and 
lingering  topaz  eves  of  May,  Michael  would  wait  for  Alan 
to  finish  his  game  of  cricket,  and  between  lazily  applauded 
strokes  and  catches  he  would  tell  the  tale  of  Kathleen  to 
his  fellows: 

383 


384  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"I  asked  her  to  wait  for  me.  Of  course  she  was  older 
than  me.  I  said  I  was  ready  to  marry  her  when  I  was 
twenty-one,  but  there  w^as  another  chap,  a  decent  fellow, 
devilish  handsome,  too.  He  was  frightfully  rich,  and  so 
she  agreed  to  elope  with  him.  I  helped  them  no  end.  I 
told  her  father  he  simply  must  not  attempt  to  interfere. 
But,  of  course,  I  was  frightfully  cut  up — oh,  absolutely 
knocked  out.  We're  all  of  us  unlucky  in  love  in  our  family. 
My  sister  was  in  love  with  an  Austrian  who  was  killed  by 
an  avalanche.  I  don't  suppose  I  shall  ever  be  in  love  again. 
They  say  you  never  really  fall  in  love  more  than  once  in 
your  life.  I  feel  a  good  deal  older  this  term.  I  suppose  I 
look  ...  oh,  well  hit  indeed — run  it  out,  and  again,  sir, 
and  again  ....   !" 

So  Michael  would  break  oE  the  tale  of  his  love,  until 
one  of  his  listeners  would  seek  to  learn  more  of  passion's 
frets  and  fevers. 

"But,  Bangs,  what  about  the  day  she  eloped?  What 
did  you  do?" 

''I   wrote  poetry,"   Michael  would  answer. 

"Great  Scott,  that's  a  bit  of  a  swat,  isn't  it?"  they  mar- 
veled. 

"Yes,  it's  a  bit  difficult,"  Michael  would  agree.  "Only, 
of  course,  I  only  write  vers  litre.     No  rhymes  or  anything." 

And  then  an  argument  would  arise  as  to  whether  poetry 
without  rhymes  could  fairly  be  called  poetry  at  ail.  This 
argument,  or  another  like  it,  would  last  until  the  cricket 
stopped,  when  Michael  and  his  fellows  would  stroll  into 
the  pavilion  and  examine  the  scoring-book  or  criticize  the 
conduct  of  the  game. 

It  was  a  pleasant  time,  that  summer  term,  and  life  moved 
on  very  equably  for  Michael,  notwithstanding  his  Easter- 
tide heartbreak.  Alan  caused  him  a  little  trouble  by  his 
indifference  to  anything  but  cricket,  and  one  Sunday,  when 
May  had  deepened   into  June,   Michael   took  him   to  task 


ARABESQUE  385 


for  his  attitude.  Alan  had  asked  Michael  over  to  Rich- 
mond for  the  week-end,  and  the  two  of  them  had  punted 
down  the  river  toward  Kew.  They  had  moored  their  boat 
under  a  weeping  willow  about  the  time  when  the  bells  for 
church  begin  to  chime  across   the  level  water-meadows. 

"Alan,  aren't  you  ever  going  to  fall  in  love?"  Michael 
began. 

"Why  should  I?"  Alan  countered  in  his  usual  way. 

"I  don't  know.  I  think  it's  time  you  did,"  said  Michael. 
"You've  no  idea  how  much  older  it  makes  you  feel.  And 
I  suppose  you  don't  want  to  remain  a  kid  forever.  Be- 
cause, you  know,  old  chap,  you  are  an  awful  kid  beside 
me." 

"Thanks  very  much,"  said  Alan.  "I  believe  you're  ex- 
actly one  month  older,  as  a  matter  of  fact." 

"Yes,  in  actual  time,"  said  Michael  earnestly.  "But  in 
experience  I'm  years  older  than  you." 

"That  must  be  why  you're  such  a  rotten  field,"  com- 
mented Alan.     "After  forty  the  joints  get  stiff." 

"Oh,  chuck  being  funny,"  said  Michael  severely.  "I'm 
in  earnest.  Now  you  know  as  well  as  I  do  that  last  term 
and  the  term  before  I  was  miserable.  Well,  look  at  me 
now.    I'm  absolutely  happy." 

"I  thought  you  were  so  frightfully  depressed,"  said 
Alan,  twinkling.  "I  thought  you'd  had  an  unlucky  love 
affair.  It  seems  to  take  you  differently  from  the  way  it 
takes  most  people." 

"Oh,  of  course,  I  was  miserable,"  Michael  explained. 
"But  now  I'm  happy  in  her  happiness.     That's  love." 

Alan  burst  out  laughing,  and  Michael  observed  that  if 
he  intended  to  receive  his  confidences  in  such  a  flippant 
way  he  would  in  future  take  care  to  be  more  secretive. 

"I'm  showing  you  what  a  lot  I  care  about  you,"  Michael 
went  on  in  tones  of  deepest  injury,  "by  telling  you  about 
myself.     I  think  it's  rather  rotten  of  you  to  laugh." 


386  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

**But  youVe  told  everybody,"  Alan  pointed  out. 

Michael  took  another  tack,  and  explained  to  Alan  that 
he  wanted  the  spur  of  his  companionship  in  everything. 

"It  would  be  so  ripping  if  we  were  both  in  love,"  he 
sighed.  "Honestly,  Alan,  don't  you  feel  I'm  much  more 
developed  since  last  term?  I  say,  you  played  awfully  well 
yesterday  against  Dulford  Second.  If  you  go  on  improving 
at  the  rate  you  are  now,  I  don't  see  why  you  shouldn't  get 
your  Blue  at  Oxford.  By  Jove,  you  know,  in  eighteen 
months  we  shall  be  at  Oxford.     Are  you  keen?" 

"Frightfully  keen,"  said  Alan.  "Especially  if  I  haven't 
got  to  be  in  love  all  the  time.'^ 

"I'm  not  going  to  argue  with  you  any  more,"  Michael 
announced.  "But  you're  making  a  jolly  big  mistake.  Still, 
of  course,  I  do  understand  about  your  cricket,  and  I  daresay 
love  might  make  you  a  bit  boss-eyed.  Perhaps  when  footer 
begins  again  next  term  I  shall  get  over  this  perpetual  long- 
ing I  have  for  Kathleen.  You've  no  idea  how  awful  I  felt 
when  she  said  she  loved  Trimble.  He  was  rather  a 
bounder,  too,  but  of  course  I  had  to  help  them.  I  say, 
Alan,  do  you  remember  Dora  and  Winnie?" 

"Rather,"  said  Alan,  smiling.  "We  made  pretty  good 
asses  of  ourselves  over  them.  Do  you  remember  how  fed 
up  Nancy  got?" 

So,  very  easily,  the  conversation  drifted  into  reminiscences 
of  earlier  days,  until  the  sky  w^as  quilted  with  rose-tipped 
pearly  clouds.  Then  they  swung  a  Japanese  lantern  in  the 
prow  and  worked  up-stream  toward  Richmond  clustering 
dark  against  the  west,  while  an  ivory  moon  shimmered  on 
the  dying  azure  of  the  day  behind. 

Throughout  June  the  image  of  Kathleen  became  grad- 
ually fainter  and  fainter  with  each  materialization  that 
Michael  evoked.  Then  one  evening  before  dinner  he  found 
that  the  maid  had  forgotten  to  put  a  fresh  cake  of  soap  in 
the  dish.     It  was  a  question  of  ringing  the  bell  or  of  cal- 


ARABESQUE  387 


lously  using  Kathleen's  commemorative  tablet.  Michael 
went  to  his  drawer  and,  as  he  slowly  washed  his  hands, 
he  washed  from  his  mind  the  few  insignificant  outlines  of 
Kathleen  that  were  printed  there.  The  soap  was  Trefle 
Incarnat,  and  somewhat  cynically  Michael  relished  the 
savor  of  it,  and  even  made  up  his  mind  to  buy  a  full  fat 
cake  when  this  one  should  be  finished.  Kathleen,  however, 
even  in  the  fragrant  moment  of  her  annihilation,  had  her 
revenge,  for  Michael  experienced  a  return  of  the  old  rest- 
lessness and  discontent  that  was  not  mitigated  by  Alan's 
increasing  preoccupation  with  cricket.  He  did  not  com- 
plain of  this,  for  he  respected  the  quest  of  School  Colors, 
and  was  proud  for  Alan.  At  the  same  time  something 
must  be  done  to  while  away  these  warm  summer  evenings 
until  at  Basingstead  Minor,  where  his  mother  had  delight- 
fully agreed  to  take  a  cottage  for  the  summer,  he  and  Alan 
could  revive  old  days  at  Cobble  Place. 

One  evening  Michael  went  out  about  nine  o'clock  to 
post  a  letter  and,  finding  the  evening  velvety  and  calm, 
strolled  on  through  the  enticing  streets  of  twilight.  The 
violet  shadows  in  which  the  white  caps  and  aprons  of  gos- 
siping maids  took  on  a  mothlike  immaterial  beauty,  the 
gliding,  enraptured  lovers,  the  scent  of  freshly  watered 
flower-boxes,  the  stars  winking  between  the  chimney-pots, 
and  all  the  drowsy  alertness  of  a  fine  London  dusk  drew 
him  on  to  turn  each  new  corner  as  it  arrived,  until  he  saw 
the  sky  stained  with  dull  gold  from  the  reflection  of  the 
lively  crater  of  the  Earl's  Court  Exhibition,  and  heard  over 
the  vague,  intervening  noises  music  that  was  sometimes 
clearly  melodious,  sometimes  a  mere  confusion  of  spasmodic 
sound. 

Michael  suddenly  thought  he  would  like  to  spend  his 
evening  at  the  Exhibition,  and  wondered  to  himself  why 
he  had  never  thought  of  going  there  casually  like  this,  why 
always  he  had  considered  it  necessary  to  devote  a  hot  after- 


388  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

noon  and  flurried  evening  to  its  exploitation.  By  the  en- 
trance he  met  a  fellow-Jacobean,  one  Drake,  whose  accen- 
tuated mannishness,  however  disagreeable  in  the  proximity 
of  the  school,  might  be  valuable  at  the  Exhibition.  Michael 
therefore  accepted  his  boisterous  greeting  pleasantly  enough, 
and  they  passed  through  the  turnstiles  together. 

"I'll  introduce  you  to  a  smart  girl,  if  you  like,"  Drake 
offered,  as  they  paused  undecided  between  the  attractions 
of  two  portions  of  the  Exhibition.  "She  sells  Turkish 
Delight  by  the  Cave  of  the  Four  Winds.  Very  O.T.,  my 
boy,"  Drake  went  on. 

"Do  you  mean "  Michael  began. 

"What?  Rather,"  said  Drake.  "I've  been  home  to 
her  place." 

"No  joking?"  Michael  asked. 

"Yes,"  affirmed  Drake  with  a  triumphant  inhalation  of 
sibilant  breath. 

"Rather  lucky,  wasn't  it?"  Michael  asked.  "I  mean  to 
say,  it  was  rather  lucky  to  meet  her." 

"She  might  take  you  home,"  suggested  Drake,  examining 
Michael  critically. 

"But  I  mightn't  like  her,"  Michael  expostulated. 

"Good  lord,"  exclaimed  Drake,  struck  by  a  point  of 
view  that  was  obviously  dismaying  in  its  novelty,  "you 
don't  mean  to  say  you'd  bother  about  that,  if  you  could?" 

"Well,  I  rather  think  I  should,"  Michael  admitted.  "I 
think  I'd  want  to  be  in  love." 

"You  are  an  extraordinary  chap,"  said  Drake.  "Now 
if  I  were  dead  nuts  on  a  girl,  the  last  thing  I'd  think  of 
would  be  that." 

They  walked  along  silently,  each  one  pondering  the 
other's  incomprehensibleness,  until  they  came  to  the  stall 
presided  over  by  Miss  Mabel  Bannerman,  who  in  Michael's 
opinion  bore  a  curious  resemblance  to  the  Turkish  Delight 
she  sold.    With  the  knowledge  of  her  he  had  obtained  from 


ARABESQUE  389 


Drake,  Michael  regarded  Miss  Bannerman  very  much  as 
he  would  have  looked  at  an  animal  in  the  Zoological  Gar- 
dens with  whose  habits  he  had  formed  a  previous  acquaint- 
anceship through  a  book  of  natural  history.  He  tried  to 
perceive  beyond  her  sachet-like  hands  and  watery  blue  eyes 
and  spongy  hair  and  full-blown  breast  the  fascination 
which  had  made  her  man's  common  property.  Then  he 
looked  at  Drake,  and  came  to  the  conclusion  that  the 
problem  was  not  worth  the  difficulty  of  solution. 

"I  think  I'll  be  getting  back,"  said  Michael  awkwardly. 

"Why,  it's  not  ten,"  gasped  Drake.  "Don't  be  an  ass. 
Mabel  gets  out  at  eleven,  and  we  can  take  her  home. 
Can't  we,  Mabel?" 

"Sauce!"  Mabel  archly  snapped. 

This  savory  monosyllable  disposed  of  Michael's  hesita- 
tion, and,  as  the  personality  of  Mabel  cloyed  him  with  a 
sudden  nausea,  like  her  own  Turkish  Delight,  he  left  her 
to  Drake  without  another  word  and  went  home  to  bed. 

The  night  was  hot  and  drew  Michael  from  vain  attempts 
at  sleep  to  the  open  window  where,  as  he  sat  thinking, 
a  strange  visionary  survey  of  the  evening,  a  survey  that 
he  himself  could  scarcely  account  for,  was  conjured  up. 
He  had  not  been  aware  at  the  time  of  much  more  than 
Drake  and  the  Turkish  Delight  stall.  Now  he  realized 
that  he  too  craved  for  a  Mabel,  not  a  peony  of  a  woman 
who  could  be  flaunted  like  a  vulgar  buttonhole,  but  a 
more  shy,  a  more  subtle  creature,  yet  conquerable.  Then, 
as  Michael  stared  out  over  the  housetops  at  the  brooding 
pavilion  of  sky  which  enclosed  the  hectic  city,  he  began 
to  recall  the  numberless  glances,  the  countless  attitudes, 
all  the  sensuous  phantasmagoria  of  the  Exhibition's  popu- 
lation. He  remembered  a  slim  hand,  a  slanting  eye,  lips 
translucent  in  a  burst  of  light.  He  caught  at  scents  that, 
always  fugitive,  were  now  utterly  incommunicable;  he 
trembled  at  the  remembrance  of  some  contact  in  a  crowd 


390  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

that  had  been  at  once  divinely  intimate  and  unendurably 
remote.  The  illusion  of  all  the  city's  sleepers  calling  to 
him  became  more  and  more  vivid  under  each  stifling 
breath  of  the  night.  Somewhere  beneath  that  sable  diadem 
of  chimney-tops  she  lay,  that  lovely  girl  of  his  desire.  He 
would  not  picture  her  too  clearly  lest  he  should  destroy 
the  charm  of  this  amazing  omnipotence  of  longing.  He 
would  be  content  to  enfold  the  imagination  of  her,  and  at 
dawn  let  her  slip  from  his  arms  like  a  cloud.  He  would 
sit  all  the  night-time  at  his  window,  aware  of  kisses.  Was 
this  the  emotion  that  prompted  poets  to  their  verses? 
Michael  broke  his  trance  to  search  for  paper  and  pencil, 
and  wrote  ecstatically. 

In  the  morning,  when  he  read  what  he  had  written, 
he  hastily  tore  it  up,  and  made  up  his  mind  that  the  Earl's 
Court  Exhibition  would  feed  his  fire  more  satisfactorily 
than  bad  verses.  Half  a  guinea  would  buy  a  season-ticket, 
and  July  should  be  a  pageant  of  sensations. 

Every  night  Michael  went  to  Earl's  Court  Exhibition, 
and  here  a  hundred  brilliant  but  evanescent  flames  were 
kindled  in  his  heart,  just  as  in  the  gardens  every  night  for 
three  hours  the  fairy-lamps  spangled  the  edge  of  the  paths 
in  threads  of  many-tinted  lights.  Michael  always  went 
alone,  because  he  did  not  desire  any  but  his  own  discoveries 
to  reward  his  excited  speculation.  At  first  he  merely 
enjoyed  the  sensation  of  the  slow  stream  of  people  that 
continually  went  up  and  down,  or  strolled  backward  and 
forward,  or  circled  round  the  bandstand  that  was  set 
out  like  a  great  gaudy  coronet  upon  the  parterres  of  lobelias 
and  geraniums  and  calceolarias  that  with  nightfall  came 
to  seem  brocaded  cushions. 

It  was  a  time  profitable  with  a  thousand  reflections, 
this  crowded  hour  of  the  promenade.  There  were  always 
the  mesmeric  sighing  of  silk  skirts  and  the  ceaseless  mur- 
mur of  conversation;   there  were  the  noise  of  the  band  and 


ARABESQUE  391 


the  tapping  of  canes;  there  was,  in  fact,  a  regularitj^  of 
sound  which  was  as  infinitely  soothing  as  breaking  waves 
or  a  wind-ruffled  wood.  There  were  the  sudden  provoca- 
tive glances  that  flashed  as  impersonally  as  precious  stones, 
and  yet  lanced  forth  a  thrill  that  no  faceted  gem  could 
give.  There  were  hands  whose  white  knuckles,  as  they 
rippled  over  Michael's  hands  in  some  momentary  pressure 
of  the  throng,  gave  him  a  sense  of  being  an  instrument 
upon  which  a  chord  had  been  clearly  struck.  There  were 
strands  of  hair  that  floated  against  his  cheeks  with  a  strange, 
but  exquisitely  elusive  intimacy  of  communication.  It  was 
all  very  intoxicating  and  very  sensuous;  but  the  spell  crept 
over  him  as  imperceptibly  as  if  he  were  merely  yielding 
himself  to  the  influence  of  a  beautiful  landscape,  as  if  he 
were  lotus-eating  In  a  solitude  created  by  numbers. 

Michael,  however,  was  not  content  to  dream  away  in 
a  crowd  these  passionate  nights  of  July;  and  after  a  while 
he  set  out  to  find  adventures  in  the  great  bazaar  of  the 
Exhibition,  wandering  through  the  golden  corridors  and 
arcades  with  a  queer  sense  of  suppressed  expectancy.  So 
many  fantastic  trades  w^re  carried  on  here,  that  it  was 
natural  to  endow  the  girls  behind  the  counters  w^ith  a 
more  romantic  life  than  that  of  ordinary  and  anaemic 
shop-assistants.  Even  Miss  Mabel  Bannerman  amid  her 
Turkish  Delight  came  to  seem  less  crude  in  such  surround- 
ings, and  Michael  once  or  twice  had  thoughts  of  prosecut- 
ing his  acquaintanceship ;  for  as  yet  he  had  not  been  able  to 
bring  himself  to  converse  with  any  of  the  numerous  girls, 
so  much  more  attractive  than  Mabel,  who  were  haunting 
him  with  their  suggestion  of  a  strange  potentiality. 

Michael  wandered  on  past  the  palmists  who  went  in 
and  out  of  their  tapestried  tents;  past  the  physiognomists 
and  phrenologists  and  graphologists;  past  the  vendors  of 
scents  and  silver;  past  the  languid  w^omen  who  spread 
out  their  golden  rugs  from  Samarcand;    past  the  oriental 


392  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

shops  fuming  with  odorous  pastilles,  where  lamps  encrusted 
in  deep-hued  jew^els  of  glass  glimmered  richly;  past  that 
slant-eyed  cigarette-seller  with  the  crimson  fez  crowning 
her  dark  hair. 

July  was  nearing  its  end;  the  holidays  were  in  sight; 
and  still  Michael  had  got  on  farther  with  his  ambitions; 
still  at  the  last  moment  he  would  pass  on  and  neglect 
some  perfect  opportunity  for  speech.  He  used  to  rail  at 
his  cowardice,  and  repeat  to  himself  all  his  academic  knowl- 
edge of  frail  womanhood.  He  even  took  the  trouble  to 
consult  the  Ars  Amatoria,  and  was  so  much  impressed  by 
Ovid's  prescription  for  behavior  at  a  circus  that  he  deter- 
mined to  follow  his  advice.  To  put  his  theory  into  prac- 
tice, Michael  selected  a  booth  where  seals  performed  for 
humanity  at  sixpence  a  head.  But  all  his  resolutions  ended 
in  sitting  mildly  amused  by  the  entertainment  in  a  condition 
of  absolute  decorum. 

School  broke  up  with  the  usual  explosion  of  self-con- 
gratulatory rhetoric  from  which  Michael,  owing  to  his 
Exhibition  ticket,  failed  to  emerge  with  any  calf-bound 
souvenir  of  intellectual  achievement.  He  minded  this  less 
than  his  own  pusillanimous  behavior  on  the  brink  of 
experience.  It  made  him  desperate  to  think  that  in  two 
days  he  would  be  at  Basingstead  with  his  mother  and  Alan 
and  Mrs.  Ross,  remote  even  from  utterly  the  pretence  of 
temptation. 

''Dearest  Michael,  you  really  must  get  your  things 
together,"  expostulated  Mrs.  Fane,  when  he  announced 
his  intention  of  going  round  to  the  Exhibition  as  usual  on 
the  night  before  they  were  to  leave  town. 

''Well,  mother,  I  can  pack  when  I  come  in,  and  I  do 
want  to  get  all  I  can  out  of  this  'season.'  You  see  it  will 
be  absolutely  wasted  for  August  and  half  September." 

"Michael,"  said  Mrs.  Fane  suddenly,  "you're  not  keep- 
ing anything  from  me?" 


ARABESQUE  393 


"Good  gracious,  no.  What  makes  you  ask?"  Michael 
demanded,  blushing. 

"I  was  afraid  that  perhaps  some  horrid  girl  might  have 
got  hold  of  you,"  said  Mrs.   Fane. 

"Why,  would  you  mind  very  much?"  asked  Michael, 
with  a  curious  hopefulness  that  his  mother  would  pursue 
the  subject,  as  if  by  so  doing  she  would  give  him  an  oppor- 
tunity of  regarding  himself  and  his  behavior  objectively. 

"I  don't  know  that  I  should  mind  very  much,"  said 
Mrs.  Fane,  "if  I  thought  you  were  quite  certain  not  to 
do  anything  foolish."  Then  she  seemed  to  correct  the  laxity 
of  her  point  of  view,  and  substituted,  "anything  that  you 
might  regret." 

"What  could  I  regret?"  asked  Michael,  seeking  to 
drive  his  mother  onto  the  rocks  of  frankness. 

"Surely  you  know  what  better  than  I  can  tell  you. 
Don't  you?"  The  note  of  interrogation  caught  the  wind, 
and  Mrs.  Fane  sailed  ofiE  on  the  starboard  tack. 

"But  as  long  as  you're  not  keeping  anything  from  me," 
she  went  on,  "I  don't  mind.  So  go  out,  dear  child,  and 
enjoy  yourself  by  all  means.     But  don't  be  very  late." 

"I  never  am,"  said  Michael  quickly,  and  a  little  resent- 
fully as  he  thought  of  his  very  decorous  homecomings. 

"I  know  you're  not.  You're  really  a  very  dear  fellow," 
his  mother  murmured,  now  safe  in  port. 

So  at  nine  o'clock  as  usual  Michael  passed  through  the 
turnstiles  and  began  his  feverish  progress  across  the  Exhibi- 
tion grounds,  trying  as  he  had  never  tried  before  to  screw 
himself  up  to  the  pitch  of  the  experience  he  craved. 

He  was  standing  by  one  of  the  entrances  to  the  Court 
of  Marvels,  struggling  with  his  self-consciousness  and  egg- 
ing himself  on  to  be  bold  on  this  his  last  night,  when  he 
heard  himself  accosted  as  Mr.  Michael  Fane.  He  looked 
round  and  saw  a  man  whom  he  instantly  recognized,  but 
for  the  moment  could  not  name. 
2G 


394  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"It  is  Mr.  Michael  Fane?"  the  stranger  asked.  "You 
don't  remember  me?     I  met  you  at  Clere  Abbey." 

"Brother  Aloysius!"  Michael  exclaimed,  and  as  he 
uttered  the  high-sounding  religious  appellation  he  almost 
laughed  at  the  incongruity  of  it  in  connection  with  this 
slightly  overdressed  and  dissolute-looking  person  he  so 
entitled. 

"Well,  not  exactly,  old  chap.  At  least  not  in  this  get- 
up.      Meats   is   my   name." 

"Oh,  yes,"  said  Michael  vaguely.  There  seemed  no 
other  comment  on  such  a  name,  and  Mr.  Meats  himself 
appeared  sensitive  to  the  implication  of  uncertainty,  for  he 
made  haste  to  put  Michael  at  ease  by  commenting  on  its 
oddity. 

"I  suppose  you're  thinking  it's  a  damned  funny  exchange 
for  Brother  Aloysius.  But  a  fellow  can't  help  his  name, 
and  that's  a  fact." 

"You've  left  the  Abbey  then?"  inquired  Michael. 

"Oh,  lord,  yes.  Soon  after  you  went.  It  was  no  place 
for  me.  Manners  O.  S.  B.  gave  me  the  push  pretty  quick. 
And  I  don't  blame  him.  Well,  w^hat  are  you  doing?  Have 
a  drink?  Or  have  you  got  to  meet  your  best  girl?  My, 
you've  grown  since  I  saw  you  last.  Quite  the  Johnny 
nowadays.  But  I  spotted  you  all  right.  Something  about 
your  eyes  that  would  be  very  hard  to  forget." 

Michael  thought  that,  if  it  came  to  unforgettable  eyes, 
the  eyes  of  Mr.  Meats  w^ould  stand  as  much  chance  of 
perpetual  remembrance  as  any,  since  their  unholy  light 
would  surely  set  any  heart  beating  with  the  breathless 
imagination    of    sheer   wickedness. 

"Yes,  I  have  got  funny  eyes,  haven't  I?"  said  Meats 
in  complacent  realization  of  Michael's  thoughts.  And  as 
he  spoke  he  seemed  consciously  to  exercise  their  vile  charm, 
so  that  his  irises  kindled  slowly  with  lambent  blue  flames. 

"Come    on,    let's    have    this    drink,"    urged    Meats,    and 


ARABESQUE  395 


he  led  the  way  to  a  scattered  group  of  green  tables.     They 
sat  down,   and   Michael  ordered   a  lemon-squash. 

"Very  good  drink,  too,"  commented  Meats.  "I  think 
I'll  have  the  same,  Rosie,"  he  said  to  the  girl  who  served 
them. 

"Do  you  know  that  girl?"  Michael  asked. 

"Used  to.  About  three  years  ago.  She's  gone  off 
though,"  said  Meats  indifferently. 

Michael,  to  hide  his  astonishment  at  the  contemptuous 
suggestion  of  damaged  goods,  inquired  what  Meats  had 
been  doing  since  he  left  the  monastery. 

"Want  to  know?"  asked  Meats. 

Michael  assured  him  that  he  did. 

"You're  rather  interested  in  me,  aren't  you?  Well,  I 
can  tell  you  a  few  things  and  that's  a  fact.  I  don't  suppose 
that  there's  anybody  in  London  who  could  tell  you  more. 
But  you  might  be  shocked." 

"Oh,  shut  up!"  scoffed  Michael,  blushing  with  indigna- 
tion. 

Then  began  the  shameless  narration  of  the  late  Brother 
Aloysius,  whom  various  attainments  had  enabled  to  gain 
an  equal  profit  from  religion  and  vice.  Sometimes  as 
Michael  listened  to  the  adventures  he  was  reminded  of 
Benvenuto  Cellini  or  Casanova,  but  almost  immediately 
the  comparison  would  be  shattered  by  a  sudden  sancti- 
monious blasphemy  which  he  found  nauseating.  More- 
over, he  disliked  the  sly  procurer  that  continually  leered 
through  the  man's  personality. 

"You  seem  to  have  done  a  lot  of  dirty  work  for  other 
people,"  Michael  bluntly  observed  at  last. 

"My  dear  old  chap,"  replied  Meats,  "of  course  I  have. 
You  see,  in  this  world  there  are  lots  of  people  who  can 
always  square  their  own  consciences,  if  the  worst  of  what 
they  want  to  do  is  done  for  them  behind  the  scenes  as  it 
were.     You  never  yet  heard  a  man  confess  that  he  ruined 


396  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

a  girl.  Now,  did  you?  Why,  I've  heard  the  most  shocking 
out-and-outers  anyone  could  wish  to  meet  brag  that  they've 
done  everything,  and  then  turn  up  their  eyes  and  thank 
God  they've  ahvays  respected  real  purity.  Well,  I  never 
respected  anything  or  anybody.  And  why  should  I? 
I  never  had  a  chance.  "Who  was  my  mother?  A  servant. 
Who  was  my  father?  A  minister,  a  Nonconformist  min- 
ister in  Wales.  And  what  did  the  old  tyke  do?  VvHiy,  he 
took  the  case  to  court  and  swore  my  mother  was  out  for 
blackmail.  So  she  went  to  prison,  and  he  came  smirking 
home  behind  the  village  band;  and  all  the  old  women  in 
the  place  hung  out  Union  Jacks  to  show  they  believed  in 
him.     And  then  his  wife  gave  a  party." 

Michael  looked  horrified  and  felt  horrified  at  this  reve- 
lation of  vileness,  and  yet,  all  the  time  he  was  listening, 
through  some  grotesquery  of  his  nerves  he  was  aware  of 
thinking  to  himself  the  jingle  of  Little  Bo-peep. 

"Ah,  that's  touched  you  up,  hasn't  it?"  said  Meats, 
eagerly  leaning  forward.  "But  wait  a  bit.  What  did  my 
mother  do  when  she  came  out?  Went  on  the  streets.  Do 
you  hear?  On  the  streets,  and,  mark  you,  she  was  a  servant, 
a  common  village  servant,  none  of  your  flash  Empire  goods. 
Oh,  no,  she  never  knew  what  it  was  like  to  go  up  the  river 
on  a  Sunday  afternoon.  And  she  drank.  Weil,  of  course 
she  drank.  Gin  was  as  near  as  she  ever  got  to  paradise. 
And  where  was  I  brought  up?  Not  among  the  buttercups, 
my  friend,  you  may  lay  on  that.  No,  I  was  down  under- 
neath, underneath,  underneath  where  a  chap  like  you  will 
never  go  because  you're  a  gentleman.  And  so,  though,  of 
course,  you're  never  likely  to  ruin  a  girl,  you'll  always  have 
your  fun.  Why  shouldn't  you?  Being  a  nicely  brought-up 
young  gentleman,  it's  your  birthright." 

"But  how  on  earth  did  you  ever  become  a  monk?" 
asked  Michael,  anxious  to  divert  the  conversation  away 
from  himself. 


ARABESQUE  397 


"Well,  it  does  sound  a  bit  improbable,  I  must  say. 
I  was  recommended  there  by  a  priest — a  nice  chap  called 
Arbuthnot,  who'd  believe  a  chimney-sweep  was  a  miller. 
But  Manners  was  very  sharp  on  to  me,  and  I  was  very 
sharp  on  to  Manners.  Picking  blackberries  and  emptying 
slops!  What  a  game!  I  came  with  a  character  and  left 
without  one.  Probationer  was  what  they  called  me.  Silly 
mug  was  what  I  called  myself." 

"You  seem  to  know  a  lot  of  priests,"  said   Michael. 

"Oh,  I've  been  in  with  parsons  since  I  was  at  Sunday- 
school.  Well,  don't  look  so  surprised.  You  don't  suppose 
my  mother  wanted  me  hanging  round  all  the  afternoon. 
Now  I  very  soon  found  out  that  one  can  always  get  round 
a  High  Church  slum  parson,  and  very  often  a  Catholic 
priest  by  turning  over  a  new  leaf  and  confessing.  It  gets 
them  every  time  and,  being  by  nature  generous,  it  gets 
their  pockets.  That's  why  I  gave  up  Dissenters  and  fashion- 
able vicars.  Dissenters  want  more  than  they  give,  and 
fashionable  vicars  are  too  clever.  That's  why  they  become 
fashionable  vicars,  I  suppose,"  said  Meats  pensively. 

"But  you  couldn't  go  on  taking  in  even  priests  forever," 
Michael  objected. 

"Ah,  now  I'll  tell  you  something.  I  do  feel  religious 
sometimes,"  Meats  declared  solemnly.  "And  I  do  really 
want  to  lead  a  new  life.  But  it  doesn't  last.  It's  like  love. 
Never  mind,  perhaps  I'll  be  lucky  enough  to  die  when  I'm 
working  off  a  religious  stretch.  I  give  you  my  word,  Fane, 
that  often  in  these  fits  I've  felt  like  committing  suicide 
just  to  cheat  the  devil.     Would  you  believe  that?" 

"I  don't  think  you're  as  bad  as  you  make  out,"  said 
Michael   sententiously. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  am,"  smiled  the  other.  "I'm  rotten  bad. 
But  I  reckon  the  first  man  I  meet  in  hell  will  be  my  father, 
and  if  it's  possible  to  hurt  anyone  down  there  more  than 
they're  being  hurt  already,  I'll  do  it.    But  look  here,  I  shall 


398  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

get  the  hump  with  this  blooming  conversation  you've  started 
me  off  on.  Come  along,  drink  up  and  have  another,  and 
tell  us  something  about  yourself." 

"Oh,  there's  nothing  to  tell,"  Michael  sighed.  "My 
existence  is  pretty  dull,  after  yours." 

"I  suppose  it  is,"  said  Meats,  as  if  struck  by  a  new 
thought.     "Everything  has  its  compensations,  as  they  say." 

"Frightfully  dull,"  Michael  vowed.  "Why,  here  am  I 
still  at  school!  You  know  I  wouldn't  half  mind  going 
down  underneath,  as  you  call  it,  for  a  while.  I  believe  I'd 
like  it." 

"If  you  knew  you  could  get  up  again  all  right."  com- 
mented Meats. 

"Oh,  of  course,"  Michael  answered.  "I  don't  suppose 
.^neas  would  have  cared  much  about  going  down  to  hell, 
if  he  hadn't  been  sure  he  could  come  up  again  quite 
safely." 

"Well,  I  don't  know  your  friend  with  the  Jewish  name," 
said  Meats.  "But  I'll  lay  he  didn't  come  out  much  wiser 
than  he  went  in  if  he  knew  he  could  get  out  all  right  by 
pressing  a  button  and  taking  the  first  lift  up." 

"Oh,  well,  I  was  only  speaking  figuratively,"  Michael 
explained. 

"So  was  I.  The  same  here  and  many  of  them,  old  chap," 
retorted  Meats  enigmatically. 

"Ah,  you  don't  think  I'm  in  earnest.  You  think  Vm 
fooling,"  Michael  complained. 

"Oh,  yes,  I  think  you'd  like  to  take  a  peep  without 
letting  go  of  Nurse's  apron,"  sneered  Meats. 

"Well,  perhaps  one  day  you'll  see  me  underneath," 
Michael  almost  threatened. 

"No  offence,  old  chap,"  said  Meats  cordially.  "It's  no 
good  my  giving  you  an  address  because  it  won't  last,  but 
London  isn't  very  big,  and  we'll  run  up  against  one  another 


ARABESQUE  399 


again,  that's  a  cert.  Now  I've  got  to  toddle  o£E  and  meet 
a  girl." 

"Have  you?"  asked  Michael,  and  his  inquiry  was  tinged 
with  a  faint  longing  that  the  other  noticed  at  once. 

"Jealous?"  inquired  Meats.  "Why,  look  at  all  the  girls 
round  about  you.     It's  up  to  you  not  to  feel  lonely." 

"I  know,"  said  Michael  fretfully.  "But  how  the  deuce 
can  I  tell  whether  they  want  me  to  talk  to  them?" 

Meats  laughed  shrilly. 

"What  are  you  afraid  of?  Leading  some  innocent  lamb 
astray?" 

Again  to  Michael  occurred  the  ridiculous  rhyme  of  Bo- 
peep.  So  insistent  was  it  that  he  could  scarcely  refrain 
from  humming  it  aloud. 

"Of  course  I'm  not  afraid  of  that,"  he  protested.  "But 
how  am  I  to  tell  they  won't  think  me  a  brute  ?" 

"What  would  it  matter  if  they  did?"  asked  Meats. 

"Well,  I  should  feel  a  fool." 

"Oh,  dear.     You're  very  young,  aren't  you?" 

"It's  nothing  to  do  with  being  young,"  Michael  asserted. 
"I  simply  don't  want  to  be  a  cad." 

"Somebody  else  is  to  be  the  cad  first  and  then  it's  all 
right,  eh?"  chuckled  Meats.  "But  it's  a  shame  to  tease 
a  nice  chap  like  you.  I  daresay  Daisy '11  have  a  friend  with 
her." 

"Is  Daisy  the  girl  you're  going  to  see?" 

"You've  guessed  my  secret,"  said  Meats.  "Come  on, 
I'll  introduce  you." 

As  Michael  rose  to  follow  Meats,  he  felt  that  he  was 
like  Faust  with  Mephistopheles.  But  Faust  had  asked  for 
his  youth  back  again.  Michael  only  demanded  the  courage 
not  to  waste  youth  while  it  was  his  to  enjoy.  He  felt 
that  his  situation  was  essentially  different  from  the  other, 
and  he  hesitated  no  longer. 

The  Mext   half-hour   passed    in   a   whirl.      Michael   was 


400  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

conscious  of  a  slim  brunette  in  black  and  scarlet,  and  of  a 
fairy-like  figure  by  her  side  in  a  dress  of  shimmering  blue; 
he  was  conscious  too  of  a  voice  insinuating,  softly  metallic, 
and  of  fingers  that  touched  his  wrist  as  lightly  as  silk. 
There  were  whispers  and  laughters  and  sudden  sweeping 
embarrassments.  There  was  a  horrible  sense  of  publicity, 
of  curious  mocking  eyes  that  watched  his  progress.  There 
was  an  overwhelming  knowledge  of  money  burning  in  his 
pocket,  of  money  hard  and  round  and  powerful.  There 
were  hot  waves  of  remorse  and  the  thought  of  his  heart 
hammering  him  on  to  be  brave.  A  cabman  leaned  over 
from  his  box  like  a  gargoyle.     A  key  clicked. 

Then,  it  seemed  a  century  afterwards,  Carlington  Road 
stretched  dim,  austere,  forbidding  to  Michael's  ingress. 
A  policeman's  deep  salutation  sounded  portentously  re- 
proachful. The  bloom  of  dawn  was  on  the  windows. 
The  flames  in  the  street-lamps  were  pale  as  primroses. 
At  his  own  house  Michael  saw  the  red  and  amber  sparrows 
in  their  crude  blue  vegetation  horribly  garish  against  the 
lighted  entrance-hall.  The  Salve  printed  funereally  upon 
the  mat  was  the  utterance  of  blackest  irony.  He  hastily 
turned  down  the  gas,  and  the  stairs  caught  a  chill  unreality 
from  the  creeping  dawn.  The  balustrade  stuck  to  his 
parched  hands;  the  stairs  creaked  grotesquely  to  his  breath- 
less ascent.     His  mother  stood  like  a  ghost  in  her  doorway. 

"Michael,  how  dreadfully  late  you  are." 

"Am  I?"  said  Michael.  "I  suppose  it  is  rather  late. 
I  met  a  fellow  I  know." 

He  spoke  petulantly  to  conceal  his  agitation,  and  his 
one  thought  was  to  avoid  kissing  her  before  he  went  up  to 
his  own  room. 

"It's  all  right  about  my  packing,"  he  murmured  hastily. 
"In  the  morning  I  shall  have  time.  I'm  sorry  I  woke  you. 
Good  night." 

He  had  passed;  and  he  looked  back  compassionately,  as 


ARABESQUE  401 


she  faded  in  her  rosy  and  indefinite  loveliness  away  to  her 
room. 

Then,  with  the  patterns  of  foulard  ties  crawling  like 
insects  before  his  strained  eyes,  with  collars  coiling  and  un- 
coiling like  mainsprings,  with  all  his  clothes  in  one  large 
intolerable  muddle,  Michael  pressed  the  cold  sheets  to  his 
forehead  and  tried  to  imagine  that  to-morrow  he  would  be 
in  the  country. 


CHAPTER   XV 
GRAY   EYES 

AS  Michael  sat  opposite  to  his  mother  in  the  railway- 
carriage  on  the  following  morning,  he  found  it 
hard  indeed  to  realize  that  an  ocean  did  not  stretch 
between  them.  He  did  not  feel  ashamed;  he  had  no 
tremors  for  the  straightforward  regard;  he  had  no  uneasy 
sensation  that  possibly  even  now  his  mother  was  perplexing 
herself  on  account  of  his  action.  He  simply  felt  that  he  had 
suffered  a  profound  change  and  that  his  action  of  yesterday 
called  for  a  readjustment  of  his  entire  standpoint.  Or 
rather,  he  felt  that  having  since  yesterday  traveled  so  far 
and  lived  so  violently,  he  could  now  only  meet  his  mother 
as  a  friend  from  whom  one  has  been  long  parted  and  whose 
mental  progress  during  many  years  must  be  gradually 
apprehended. 

"Why  do  you  look  at  me  with  such  a  puzzled  expression, 
Michael?"  asked  Mrs.  Fane.     "Is  my  hat  crooked?" 

Michael  assured  her  that  nothing  was  the  matter  with 
her  hat. 

"Do  you  want  to  ask  me  something?"  persisted  Mrs. 
Fane. 

Michael  shook  his  head  and  smiled,  wondering  whether 
he  did  really  wish  to  ask  her  a  question,  whether  he  would 
be  relieved  to  know  what  attitude  she  would  adopt  toward 
his  adventure.  With  so  stirring  a  word  did  he  enhance 
what  otherwise  would  have  seemed  base.     His  mother  evi- 

402 


GRAY    EYES  403 


dently  was  aware  of  a  tension  in  this  ridiculously  circum- 
scribed railway-carriage.  Would  it  be  released  if  he  were 
to  inform  her  frankly  of  what  had  happened,  or  would 
such  an  admission  be  an  indiscretion  from  which  their  re- 
lationship would  never  recover?  After  all  she  was  his 
mother,  and  there  must  positively  exist  in  her  inmost  self 
the  power  of  understanding  what  he  had  done.  Some  part 
of  the  impulse  which  had  actuated  his  behavior  would 
surely  find  a  root  in  the  heart  of  the  handsome  woman  who 
traveled  with  such  becoming  repose  on  the  seat  opposite 
to  him.  He  forgot  to  bother  about  himself  in  this  sudden 
new  pleasure  of  observation  that  seemed  to  endow  him 
with  undreamed-of  opportunities  of  distraction  and,  what 
was  more  important,  with  a  stable  sense  of  his  own 
individuality.  How  young  his  mother  looked!  Until  now 
he  had  taken  her  youth  for  granted,  but  she  must  be  nearly 
forty.  It  was  scarcely  credible  that  this  tall  slim  creature 
with  the  proud,  upcurving  mouth  and  lustrous  gray  eyes 
was  his  own  mother.  He  thought  of  his  friends'  homes 
that  were  presided  over  by  dumpy  women  in  black  silk  with 
graying  hair.  Even  Alan's  mother,  astonishingly  pretty 
though  she  was,  seemed  in  the  picture  he  conjured  of  her 
to  look  faded  beside  his  own. 

And,  while  he  was  pondering  his  mother's  beauty,  the 
train  reached  the  station  at  which  they  must  alight  for 
Basingstead.  There  was  Alan  in  white  flannels  on  the 
platform,  there  too  was  Mrs.  Ross;  and,  as  she  greeted  his 
mother,  Michael's  thoughts  went  back  to  the  day  he  saw 
these  two  come  together  at  Carlington  Road,  and  by  their 
gracious  encounter  drive  away  the  shadow  of  Nurse. 

''I  vote  we  walk,"  said  Alan.  *'Mrs.  Fane  and  Aunt 
Maud  can  drive  in  the  pony-chaise,  and  then  your  luggage 
can  all  come  up  at  once  in  the  cart." 

So  it  was  arranged,  and  as  Michael  watched  his  mother 
and  Mrs.  Ross  drive  off,  he  was  strangely  reminded  of  a 


404  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

picture  that  he  had  once  dearly  loved,  a  picture  by  Flax- 
man  of  Hera  and  Athene  driving  down  from  Olympus  to 
help  the  Greeks.  AcvKwXevos  "iiprj — that  w^as  his  mother, 
and  y\avK(07n<s  "'KOrjxrq — that  was  Mrs.  Ross.  He  could 
actually  remember  the  line  in  the  Iliad  that  told  of  the 
gates  of  heaven,  where  the  Hours  keep  watch,  opening  for 
the  goddesses'  descent — avro^tarat  hi  ttvXch  /jlvkov  ovpavoi 
as  ^x'^v'^QpaL.  At  the  same  time,  for  all  his  high  quota- 
tions, Michael  could  not  help  smiling  at  the  dolefully 
senescent  dun  pony  being  compared  to  the  golden  steeds 
of  Hera  or  at  the  pleasant  old  porter  who  hastened  to 
throw  open  the  white  gate  of  the  station-drive  serving  as 
a  substitute  for  the  Hours. 

The  country  air  was  still  sweet  between  the  hazel  hedge- 
rows, although  the  grass  was  drouthy  and  the  scabious 
blooms  were  already  gray  with  dust.  Nothing  for  Michael 
could  have  been  more  charged  with  immemorial  perfume 
than  this  long  walk  at  July's  end.  It  held  the  very  quin- 
tessence of  holiday  airs  through  all  the  marching  years  of 
boyhood.  It  was  haunted  by  the  memory  of  all  the  glad 
anticipations  of  six  weeks'  freedom  that  time  after  time 
had  succeeded  the  turmoil  of  breaking  up  for  the  August 
holidays.  The  yellow  amoret  swinging  from  the  tallest 
shoot  of  the  hedge  was  the  companion  of  how  many  summer 
walks.  The  acrid  smell  of  nettles  by  the  roadside  was  pro- 
phetic of  how  many  pastoral  days.  The  butterflies,  brown 
and  white  and  tortoiseshell,  that  danced  away  to  right  and 
left  over  the  green  bushes,  to  what  winding  paths  did  they 
not  summon.  And  surely  Alan  gave  a  final  grace  to  this 
first  walk  of  the  holidays.  Surely  he  crystallized  all  hopes, 
all  memories,  all  delights  of  the  past  in  a  perfection  of 
present  joy. 

Yet  Michael,  as  he  walked  beside  him,  could  only  think 
of  Alan  as  a  beautiful  inanimate  object  for  whom  per- 
ception  did  not   exist.     Inanimate,   however,   was  scarcely 


GRAY   EYES  405 


the  word  to  describe  one  who  was  so  very  definitely  alive: 
Michael  racked  his  invention  to  discover  a  suitable  label  for 
Alan,  but  he  could  not  find  the  word.  With  a  shock  of 
misgiving  he  asked  himself  whether  he  had  outgrown  their 
friendship,  and  partly  to  test,  but  chiefly  to  allay  his  dread, 
he  took  Alan's  arm  with  a  gesture  of  almost  fierce  posses- 
sion. He  was  relieved  to  find  that  Alan's  touch  was  still 
primed  with  consolation,  that  companionship  with  him  still 
soothed  the  turbulence  of  his  own  spirit  reaching  out  to 
grasp  what  could  never  be  expressed  in  words,  and  there- 
fore could  never  be  grasped.  Michael  was  seized  with  a 
longing  to  urge  Alan  to  grow  up  more  quickly,  to  make 
haste  lest  he  should  be  left  behind  by  his  adventurous 
friend.  Michael  remembered  how  he  used  to  dread  being 
moved  up,  hating  to  leave  Alan  in  a  class  below  him,  how 
he  had  deliberately  dallied  to  allow  Alan  to  overtake  him. 
But  idleness  in  school-work  was  not  the  same  as  idleness 
in  experience  of  life  and,  unless  Alan  would  quickly  grow 
up,  he  knew  that  he  must  soon  leave  him  irremediably  be- 
hind. It  was  distressing  to  reflect  that  Alan  would  be 
shocked  by  the  confidence  which  he  longed  to  impose  upon 
him,  and  it  was  disquieting  to  realize  that  these  last  sum- 
mer holidays  of  school,  however  complete  with  the  quiet 
contentment  of  familiar  pleasures,  would  for  himself  grow 
slowly  irksome  with  deferred  excitement. 

But  as  the  green  miles  slowly  unfolded  themselves,  as 
the  dauntless  yellow  amoret  still  swung  from  a  lissome 
stem,  as  Alan  spoke  of  the  river  and  the  gray  tower  on  the 
hill,  Michael  saw  the  fretful  colors  of  the  Exhibition  grow 
dim;  and,  when  dreaming  in  the  haze  of  the  slumberous 
afternoon  they  perceived  the  village  and  heard  the  mys- 
terious murmur  of  human  tranquillity,  Michael's  heart 
overflowed  with  gratitude  for  the  sight  of  Alan  by  his 
side.  Then  the  church-clock  that  struck  a  timeless  hour 
sounded  for  him  one  of  those  moments  whose  significance 


4o6  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

would  resist  eternally  whatever  lying  experience  should 
endeavor  to  assail  the  truth  which  had  made  of  one  flashing 
scene  a  revelation. 

Michael  was  ineffably  refreshed  by  his  vision  of  the 
imperishable  substance  of  human  friendship,  and  he  could 
not  but  jeer  at  himself  now  for  having  a  little  while  back 
put  Alan  into  the  domain  of  objects  inanimate. 

"There's  your  cottage,"  said  Alan.  "It's  practically  next 
door  to  Cobble  Place.     Rather  decent,  eh?" 

Michael  could  not  say  how  decent  he  thought  it,  nor 
how  decent  he  thought  Alan. 

"I  vote  we  go  up  tho  river  after  tea,"  he  suggested. 

"Rather,"  said  Alan.  "I  expect  you'll  come  round  to 
tea  with  us.     Don't  be  long  unpacking." 

"I  shan't,  you  bet,"  said  Michael. 

Nor  was  he,  and  after  a  few  minutes  he  and  his  mother 
were  sitting  in  the  drawing-room  at  Cobble  Place,  eating  a 
tea  that  must  have  been  very  nearly  the  same  as  an  un- 
forgettable tea  of  nine  years  ago.  Mrs.  Carthew  did  not 
seem  quite  so  old;  nor  indeed  did  anybody,  and  as  for 
Joan  and  May  Carthew,  they  were  still  girls.  Yet  even 
when  he  and  Alan  had  stayed  down  here  for  the  wedding 
only  four  years  ago,  Michael  had  always  been  conscious  of 
everybody's  age.  And  now  he  was  curiously  aware  of  every- 
body's youth.  He  supposed  vaguely  that  all  this  change  of 
outlook  was  due  to  his  own  remarkable  precocity  and  rapid 
advance ;  but  nevertheless  he  still  ate  with  all  the  heartiness 
of  childhood. 

After  tea  Mrs.  Ross  with  much  tact  took  up  Michael  by 
himself  to  see  her  son  and,  spared  the  necessity  of  comment, 
Michael  solemnly  regarded  the  fair-haired  boy  of  two  who 
was  squeaking  an  India  rubber  horse  for  his  mother's 
benefit. 

"O  you  attractive  son  of  mine,"  Mrs.  Ross  sighed  in  a 
whisper. 


GRAY    EYES  407 


"He's  an  awfully  sportive  kid,"  Michael  said. 

Then  he  suddenly  remembered  that  he  had  not  seen 
Mrs.  Ross  since  her  husband  was  killed.  Yet  from  this 
chintz-hung  room  whose  casements  were  flooded  with  the 
amber  of  the  westering  sun,  how  far  off  seemed  fatal  Africa. 
He  remembered  also  that  to  this  very  same  gay  room  he  had 
long  ago  gone  with  Miss  Carthew  after  tea,  that  here  in  a 
ribboned  bed  he  had  first  heard  the  news  of  her  coming  to 
live  at  64  Carlington  Road. 

"We  must  have  a  long  talk  together  soon,"  said  Mrs. 
Ross,  seeming  to  divine  his  thoughts.  "But  I  expect  you're 
anxious  to  revive  old  memories  and  visit  old  haunts  with 
Alan.  I'm  going  to  stay  here  and  talk  to  Kenneth  while 
Nurse  has  her  tea." 

Michael  lingered  for  a  moment  in  the  doorway  to  watch 
the  two.     Then  he  said  abruptly,  breathlessly: 

"Mrs.  Ross,  I  think  painters  and  sculptors  are  lucky 
fellows.  I'd  like  to  paint  you  now.  I  wish  one  could 
understand  the  way  people  look,  when  one's  young.  But 
I'm  just  beginning  to  realize  how  lucky  I  was  when  you 
came  to  us.  And  yet  I  used  to  be  ashamed  of  having  a 
governess.  Still,  I  believe  I  did  appreciate  you,  even  when 
I  was  eight." 

Then  he  fled,  and  to  cover  his  retreat  sang  out  loudly 
for  Alan  all  the  way  downstairs. 

"I  say.  Aunt  Enid  wants  to  talk  to  you,"  said  Alan. 

"Aunt   Enid?"   Michael   echoed. 

"Mrs.  Carthew,"  Alan  explained. 

"I  vote  we  go  for  a  walk  afterwards,  don't  you?" 
Michael  suggested. 

"Rather,"  said  Alan.  "I'll  shout  for  you,  when  I  think 
you've  jawed  long  enough." 

Michael  found  Mrs.  Carthew  in  her  sun-colored  garden, 
cutting  down  the  withering  lupins  whose  silky  seed-pods 
were  strewn  all  about  the  paths. 


4o8  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Can  you  spare  ten  minutes  for  an  old  friend?"  asked 
Mrs.  Carthew. 

Michael  thought  how  tremendously  wise  she  looked, 
and,  lest  he  should  be  held  to  be  staring  unduly,  he  bent 
down  to  sweep  together  the  shimmering  seed-pods,  while 
Mrs.  Carthew  snipped  away,  talking  in  sentences  that 
matched  the  quick  snick-a-snack  of  her  weapon. 

"I  must  say  you've  grown  up  into  an  attractive  youth. 
Let  me  see,  you  must  be  seventeen  and  a  half.  I  suppose 
you  think  yourself  a  man  now?  Dear  me,  these  lupins 
should  have  been  cut  back  a  fortnight  ago.  And  now  I 
have  destroyed  a  hollyhock.  Tut-tut,  I'm  getting  very 
blind.  What  did  you  think  of  Maud's  son?  A  healthy, 
rosy  child,  and  not  at  all  amenable  to  discipline,  I'm  glad 
to  say.     Well,   are  you  enjoying  school?" 

The  old  lady  paused  with  her  scissors  gaping,  and  looked 
shrewdly   at   Michael. 

"I'm  getting  rather  fed  up  with  it,"  Michael  admitted. 
"It  goes  on  for  such  a  long  time.  It  wasn't  so  bad  this 
term  though." 

Then  he  remembered  that  whatever  pleasures  had  miti- 
gated the  exasperation  of  school  last  term  were  decidedly 
unscholastic,  and  he  blushed. 

"I  simply  loathed  it  for  a  time,"  he  added. 

"Alan  informs  me  he  acquired  his  First  Eleven  cap  this 
term  and  will  be  in  the  First  Fifteen  as  Lord  Treasurer  or 
something,"  Mrs.  Carthew  went  on.  "Naturally  he  must 
enjoy  this  shower  of  honors.  Alan  is  decidedly  typical  of 
the  better  class  of  unthinking  young  Englishmen.  He  is 
pleasant  to  look  at — a  little  colt-like  perhaps,  but  that  will 
soon  wear  off.  My  own  dear  boy  was  very  like  him,  and 
Maud's  dear  husband  was  much  the  same.  You,  I'm  afraid, 
think  too  much,  Michael." 

"Oh,  no,  I  don't  think  very  much,"  said  Michael,  dis- 


GRAY   EYES  409 


claiming  philosophy,  and  greatly  afraid  that  Mrs.  Carthew 
was  supposing  him  a  prig. 

"You  needn't  be  ashamed  of  thinking,"  she  said.  "After 
all,  the  amount  you  think  now  won't  seriously  disorganize 
the  world.  But  you  seem  to  me  old  for  your  age,  much 
older  than  Alan  for  instance,  and  though  your  conversa- 
tion with  me  at  any  rate  is  not  mature,  nevertheless  you 
convey  somehow  an  impression  of  maturity  that  I  cannot 
quite  account   for." 

Michael  could  not  understand  why,  when  for  the  first 
time  he  was  confronted  with  somebody  who  gave  his  pre- 
cocity its  due,  he  was  unable  to  discuss  it  eagerly  and  volu- 
minously, why  he  should  half  resent  being  considered  older 
than  Alan. 

"Don't  look  so  cross  with  me,"  Mrs.  Carthew  com- 
manded. "I  am  an  old  woman,  and  I  have  a  perfect  right 
to  say  what  I  please  to  you.  Besides,  you  and  I  have  had 
many  conversations,  and  I  take  a  great  interest  in  you. 
What  are  you  going  to  be?" 

"Well,  that's  what  I  can't  find  out,"  said  Michael 
desperately.  "I  know  what  I'm  not  going  to  be,  and  that's 
all." 

"That's  a  good  deal,  I  think,"  said  Mrs.  Carthew. 
"Pray  tell  me  what  professions  you  have  condemned." 

"I'm  not  going  into  the  Army.  I'm  not  going  into  the 
Civil  Service.     I'm  not  going  to  be  a  doctor  or  a  lawyer." 

"Or  a  parson?"  asked  Mrs.  Carthew,  crunching  through 
so  many  lupin  stalks  at  once  that  they  fell  with  a  rattle  on 
to  the  path. 

"Well,  I  have  thought  about  being  a  parson,"  Michael 
slowly  granted.  "But  I  don't  think  parsons  ought  to 
marry." 

"Good  gracious,"  exclaimed  Mrs.  Carthew,  "you're  surely 

not  engaged?" 
27 


410  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Michael;  but  he  felt  extremely  flattered 
by  the  imputation.     "Still,  I  might  want  to  be." 

"Then  you're  in  love,"  decided  Mrs.  Carthew.  "No 
wonder  you  look  so  careworn.  I  suppose  she's  nearly  thirty 
and  has  promised  to  wait  until  you  come  of  age.  I  can 
picture  her.  If  I  had  my  stick  with  me  I  could  draw  her 
on  the  gravel.  A  melon  stuck  on  a  bell-glass,  I'll  be 
bound." 

"I'm  not  in  love,  and  if  I  were  in  love,"  said  Michael 
with  dignity,  "I  certainly  shouldn't  be  in  love  w^ith  anyone 
like  that.  But  I  could  be  in  love  at  any  moment,  and  so  I 
don't  think  I  shall  be  a  parson." 

"You've  got  plenty  of  time,"  said  Mrs.  Carthew.  "Alan 
says  you're  going  to  Oxford  next  year." 

Michael's  heart  leapt — next  year  had  never  before  seemed 
so  imminent. 

"I  suppose  you'll  say  that  I'm  an  ignorant  and  foolish 
old  woman,  if  I  attempt  to  give  you  advice  about  Oxford; 
but  I  gave  you  advice  once  about  school,  and  I'll  do  the 
same  again.  To  begin  with,  I  think  you'll  find  having  been 
to  St.  James'  a  handicap.  I  have  an  old  friend,  the  wife  of 
a  don,  who  assures  me  that  many  of  the  boys  who  go  up 
from  your  school  suffer  at  Oxford  from  their  selfish  incuba- 
tion by  Dr.  Brownjohn.  They're  fit  for  killing  too  soon. 
In  fact,  they  have  been  forced." 

"Ah,  but  I  saw  that  for  myself,"  said  Michael.  "I  had 
a  row  wnth  Brownjohn  about  my  future." 

"How  delighted  I  am  to  hear  that!"  said  Mrs.  Carthew. 
"I  think  that  I'll  cut  back  the  delphiniums  also.  Then 
you're  not  going  in  for  a  scholarship?" 

"No,"  said  Michael.  "I  don't  want  to  be  hampered, 
and  I  think  my  mother's  got  plenty  of  money.  But  Alan's 
going  to  get  a  scholarship." 

"Yes,  that  is  unfortunately  necessary,"  said  Mrs.  Car- 
thew.     "Still,   Alan    is   sufficiently   typical   of    the   public- 


GRAY    EYES  411 


school  spirit — an  odious  expression  yet  always  unavoidable 
— to  carry  off  the  burden.  If  you  were  poor,  I  should 
advise  you  to  buy  overcoats.  Three  smart  overcoats  are 
an  equipment  for  a  poor  man.  But  I  needn't  dwell  on 
social  ruses  in  your  case.  Remember  that  going  to  Oxford 
is  like  going  to  school.  Be  normal  and  inconspicuous  at 
first;  and  when  you  have  established  yourself  as  an  utterly 
undistinguished  )'oung  creature,  you  can  career  into  what- 
ever absurdities  of  thought,  action  or  attire  you  will. 
In  your  first  year  establish  your  sanity;  in  your  second 
year  display  your  charm;  and  in  your  third  year  do  what- 
ever you  like.  Now  there  is  Alan  calling,  and  we'll  leave 
the  paths  strewn  with  these  cut  stalks  as  a  memento  mori 
to  the  gardener.  What  a  charming  woman  your  mother  is. 
She  has  that  exquisite  vagueness  which,  when  allied  with 
good  breeding,  is  perfectly  irresistible,  at  any  rate  to  a 
practical  and  worldly  old  woman  like  me.  But  then  I've 
had  an  immense  amount  of  time  in  which  to  tidy  up. 
Pleasant  hours  to  you  down  here.  It's  delightful  to  hear 
about  the  place  the  sound  of  boys  laughing  and  shouting." 
Michael  left  Mrs.  Carthew,  rather  undecided  as  to  what 
exactly  she  thought  of  him  or  Alan  or  anybody  else.  As  he 
walked  over  the  lawn  that  w^ent  sloping  down  to  the 
stream,  he  experienced  a  revulsion  from  the  interest  he  took 
in  listening  to  what  people  thought  about  him,  and  he  now 
began  to  feel  an  almost  morbid  sensitiveness  to  the  opinion 
of  others.  This  destroyed  some  of  the  peace  which  he  had 
sought  and  cherished  down  here  in  the  country.  He  began 
to  wonder  if  that  wise  old  lady  had  been  laughing  at  him, 
whether  all  she  said  had  been  an  implied  criticism  of  his 
attitude  toward  existence.  Her  praise  must  have  been 
grave  irony;  her  endorsement  of  his  behavior  had  been 
disguised  reproof.  She  really  admired  Alan,  and  had  only 
been  trying  as  gently  as  possible  to  make  him  come  into 
line  with  her  nephew.     He  himself  must  seem  to  her  ec- 


412  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

centric,  undignified,  a  flamboyant  sort  of  creature  whom 
she  pitied  and  whose  errors  she  wished  to  remedy.  Michael 
was  mortified  by  his  retrospect  of  the  conversation,  and  felt 
inclined  when  he  saw  Alan  to  make  an  excuse  and  retire 
from  his  society,  until  his  self-esteem  had  recovered  from 
the  rebuke  that  had  lately  been  inflicted.  Indeed,  it  called 
for  a  great  effort  on  Michael's  part  to  embark  in  the  canoe 
with  his  paragon  and  sit  face  to  face  without  betraying 
the  wound  that  was  damaging  his  own  sense  of  personality. 

"You  had  a  very  long  jaw  with  Aunt  Enid,"  said  Alan. 
"I  thought  you  were  never  coming.  She  polished  me  ofiE 
in  about  three  minutes." 

Michael  looked  darkly  at  Alan  for  a  moment  before  he 
asked  with  ungracious  accentuation  what  on  earth  Alan 
and  Mrs.  Carthew  had  talked  about. 

"She  was  rather  down  on  me,"  said  Alan.  "I  think  she 
must  have  thought  I  was  putting  on  side  about  getting  my 
Eleven." 

Michael  was  greatly  relieved  to  hear  this,  and  his  brow 
cleared  as  he  inquired  what  was  wrong. 

"Well,  I  can't  remember  her  exact  words,"  Alan  went 
on.  "But  she  said  I  must  be  careful  not  to  grow  up  into  a 
strong,  silent  Englishman,  because  their  day  was  done.  She 
practically  told  me  I  was  rather  an  ass,  and  pretended  to  be 
fearfully  surprised  when  she  heard  I  was  going  to  try  for 
a  scholarship  at  Oxford.  She  was  squashing  slugs  all  the 
time  she  was  talking,  and  I  could  do  nothing  but  look  a 
bigger  fool  than  ever  and  count  the  slugs.  I  ventured 
to  remark  once  that  most  people  thought  it  was  a  good 
thing  to  be  keen  on  games,  and  she  said  half  the  world 
was  composed  of  fools  which  accounted  for  the  preponder- 
ation — I  mean  preponderance — of  pink  on  the  map.  She 
said  it  always  looked  like  an  advertisement  of  successful 
fox-hunting.  And  when  I  carefully  pointed  out  that  I'd 
never  all  my  life  had  a  chance  to  hunt,  she  said  'Mere's 


GRAY    EYES  413 


the  pity.'  I  couldn't  make  out  what  she  was  driving  at; 
so,  feeling  rather  a  worm,  I  shot  off  as  soon  as  I  could. 
What  did  she  say  to  you?" 

"Oh,  nothing  much,"  said  Michael  triumphantly.  "She*s 
a  rum  old  girl,  but  rather  decent." 

''She's  too  clever  for  me,"  said  Alan,  shaking  his  head. 
"It's  like  batting  to  a  pro." 

Then  from  the  complexities  of  feminine  judgment,  the 
conversation  glided  easily  like  the  canoe  toward  a  discus- 
sion of  the  umpire's  decision  last  term  in  giving  Alan  out 
l.b.w.  to  a  ball  that  pitched  at  least  two  feet  away  from 
the  off  stump. 

"It  was  rotten,"  said  Alan  fervidly. 

"It  was  putrid,"  Michael  agreed. 

To  avoid  the  difficulty  of  a  first  night  in  a  strange  cot- 
tage, Mrs.  Fane  and  Michael  had  supper  at  Cobble  Place; 
and  after  a  jolly  evening  spent  in  looking  for  pencils  to 
play  games  that  nobody  could  ever  recollect  in  all  their 
rich  perfection  of  potential  incidents,  Michael  and  Mrs. 
Fane  walked  with  leisurely  paces  back  to  Woodbine  Cot- 
tage through  a  sweet-savored  moonless  night. 

Michael  enjoyed  the  intimate  good  night  beneath  so 
small  a  roof,  and  wished  that  Stella  were  with  them.  He 
lay  awake,  reading  from  each  in  turn  of  the  tower  of  books 
he  had  erected  by  his  bedside  to  fortify  himself  against 
sleeplessness.  It  was  a  queer  enough  mixture — Swinburne, 
Keats,  Matthew  Arnold,  Robinson  Crusoe,  Half-hours  with 
the  Mystics,  Tom  Brown's  Schooldays,  Daudet's  Sappho, 
the  second  volume  of  The  Savoy,  The  Green  Carnation, 
Holy  Living  and  Dying;  and  as  each  time  he  changed 
his  mind  and  took  another  volume,  on  the  gabled  ceiling 
the  monstrous  shadow  that  was  himself  filled  him  with 
a  dreadful  uncertainty.  After  an  Tiour  or  so,  he  went  to 
sit  by  the  low  window,  leaning  out  and  seeming  to  hear 
the  dark  world  revolve  in  its  course.     Stars  shook  them- 


414  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

selves  clear  from  great  rustling  trees,  and  were  in  time  en- 
meshed by  others.  The  waning  moon  came  up  behind  a 
rounded  hill.  A  breeze  fluttered  down  the  dusty  road  and 
was   silent. 

Michael  fell  to  wondering  whether  he  could  ever  bring 
himself  in  tune  with  these  slow  progressions  of  nature, 
whether  he  could  renounce  after  one  haggard  spell  of  ex- 
perience the  mazy  stir  of  transitory  emotions  that  danced 
always  beyond  this  dream.  An  Half-hour  with  St.  John  of 
the  Cross  made  him  ask  himself  whether  this  were  the  dark 
night  of  the  soul  through  which  he  was  passing.  But  he 
had  never  traveled  yet,  nor  was  he  traveling  now.  He 
was  simply  sitting  quiescent,  allowing  himself  to  be  passed. 
These  calm  and  stately  figures  of  humanity  whom  he  ad- 
mired in  their  seclusion  had  only  reached  it  after  long  strife. 
Mrs.  Carthew  had  lost  a  husband  and  a  son,  had  seen  her 
daughter  leave  her  house  as  a  governess.  Joan  and  May 
had  for  many  years  sunk  their  hopes  in  tending  their 
mother.  Nancy  was  away  earning  money,  and  would  be 
entitled  to  retire  here  one  day.  Mrs.  Ross  had  endured 
himself  and  Stella  for  several  years,  had  married  and  lost 
her  husband,  and  had  borne  a  child.  All  these  had  won 
their  timeless  repose  and  their  serene  uncloying  ease.  They 
were  not  fossils,  but  perdurable  images  of  stone.  And  his 
mother,  she  was — he  stopped  his  reverie.  Of  his  mother 
he  knew  nothing.  Outside  the  dust  stirred  in  the  road 
fretfully;  a  malaise  was  in  the  night  air.  Michael  shivered 
and  went  back  to  bed,  and  as  he  turned  to  blow  out  his 
candle  he  saw  above  him  huge  and  menacing  his  own 
shadow.     A  cock  crowed. 

"Silly  ass,"  muttered  Michael.  "He  thinks  it's  already 
morning,"  and  turning  over  after  a  dreamless  sleep  he 
found  it  was  morning.  So  he  rose  and  dressed  himself 
serenely  for  a  long  sunburnt  day. 

On  his  way  up  the  road  to  call   for  Alan  he  met  the 


GRAY    EYES  41 S 


postman,  who  in  answer  to  his  inquiries  handed  him  a 
letter  from  South  Africa  stamped  all  over  with  mysterious 
official  abbreviations.  He  took  it  up  to  his  mother  curi- 
ously. 

At  lunch  he  asked  her  about  the  news  from  the  war. 

"Yes,  dear,  I  had  a  letter,"  she  murmured. 

"From  Lord  Saxby,  I  suppose?" 

"Yes,  dear." 

"Anything   interesting?"    Michael    persisted. 

"Oh,  no,  it's  only  about  marches  and  not  being  able  to 
wash  properly." 

"I  thought  it  might  be  interesting,"  Michael  speculated. 

"No,  dear.  It  wouldn't  interest  you,"  said  Mrs.  Fane 
in  her  tone  of  gentle  discouragement. 

"I  don't  want  to  be  inquisitive,"  said  Michael  resent- 
fully. 

"No,  dear,  Fm  sure  you  don't,"  his  mother  softly  agreed. 

The  holidays  ran  their  pastoral  course  of  sun  and  rain,  of 
clouds  and  winds,  until  the  last  week  arrived  with  Septem- 
ber in  her  most  majestic  mood  of  flawless  halcyon.  These 
were  days  that  more  than  any  hitherto  enhanced  for  Michael 
the  reverence  he  felt  for  the  household  of  Cobble  Place. 
These  were  days  when  Mrs.  Carthew  stepped  wisely  along 
her  flowery  enclosure,  pondering  the  plums  and  peaches 
on  the  warm  walls  that  in  a  transcendency  of  mellow  sun- 
light almost  took  on  the  texture  of  living  sunburnt  flesh. 
These  were  days  when  Joan  and  May  Carthew  went  down 
the  village  street  with  great  bunches  of  Michaelmas  daisies, 
of  phloxes  and  Japanese  anemones,  or  sat  beneath  the  mul- 
berry tree,  sewing  in  the  bee-drowsed  air. 

At  the  foot  of  the  hill  beyond  the  stream  was  a  straggling 
wind-frayed  apple-orchard,  fresh  pasturage  for  lambs  in 
spring,  and  now  in  September  a  jolly  haunt  for  the  young 
son  of  Mrs.  Ross.  Here  one  afternoon,  when  Alan  was 
away  at  Basingstead  Major  playing  the  last  cricket  match 


41 6  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

of  the  year,  Michael  plunged  down  in  the  grass  beside  her. 

They  sat  for  a  while  in  silence,  and  Mrs.  Ross  seemed 
to  Michael  to  be  waiting  for  him  to  speak  first,  as  if  by  her 
own  attitude  of  mute  expectation  she  could  lure  him  on 
to  express  himself  more  openly  than  by  direct  question 
and  shy  answer.  He  felt  the  air  pregnant  with  confidences, 
and  kept  urging  himself  on  to  begin  the  statement  and 
revelation  of  his  character,  sure  that  whatever  he  desired 
to  ask  must  be  asked  now  while  he  was  perhaps  for  the 
last  time  liable  to  this  grave  woman's  influence,  conscious 
of  the  security  of  goodness,  envious  of  the  maternity  of 
peace.  This  gray-eyed  woman  seemed  to  sit  above  him 
like  a  proud  eagle,  careless  of  homage,  never  to  be  caught, 
never  to  be  tamed,  a  figure  for  worship  and  inspiration. 
Michael  wondered  why  all  the  women  who  awed  him  had 
gray  eyes.  Blue  eyes  fired  his  senses,  striking  sparks  and 
kindling  answering  flames  from  his  own  blue  eyes.  Brown 
eyes  left  him  indifferent.  But  gray  eyes  absorbed  his  very 
being,  whether  they  were  lustrous  and  violet-shaded  like 
his  mother's  and  Stella's,  or  whether  like  Mrs.  Ross's  they 
were  soft  as  gray  sea-water  that  in  a  moment  could  change 
to  the  iron-bound  rocks  they  were  so  near. 

Still  Michael  did  not  speak,  but  watched  Mrs.  Ross 
solemnly  hand  back  to  the  rosy  child  sitting  beside  her  in 
the  grass  the  fallen  apples  that  he  would  always  fling  from 
him  exuberantly,  panting  the  while  at  laughter's  highest 
pitch. 

"I  wonder  if  I  ever  laughed  like  that,"  said  Michael. 

"You  were  a  very  serious  little  boy,  when  I  first  knew 
you,"  Mrs.  Ross  told  him. 

"I  must  have  been  rather  depressing,"   Michael  sighed. 

"No,  indeed  you  were  not,  dear  Michael,"  she  answered. 
"You  had  much  too  much  personality." 

"Have  I  now?"  Michael  asked  sharply. 

"Yes,  of  course  you  have." 


GRAY   EYES  417 


"Well,  what  gives  it  to  me?" 

"Surely  personality  is  something  that  is  born  with  one. 
Personality  can't  be  made,"  said  Mrs.  Ross. 

"You  don't  think  experience  has  got  anything  to  do  with 
it?"    Michael   pressed. 

"I  think  experience  makes  the  setting,  and  according 
to  the  experience  the  personality  is  perfected  or  debased, 
but  nothing  can  destroy  personality,  not  even  death,"  she 
murmured,  far  away  for  a  moment  from  this  orchard. 

"Which  would  you  say  had  the  stronger  personality — 
Alan  or  I  ?"  asked  Michael. 

"I  should  say  you  had,"  said  Mrs.  Ross.  "Or  at  any 
rate  you  have  a  personality  that  will  affect  a  large  number 
of  people,  either  favorably  or  unfavorably." 

"But  Alan  influences  me  more  than  I  influence  him," 
Michael  argued. 

"That  may  be,"  Mrs.  Ross  admitted.  "Though  I  think 
your  influence  over  Alan  is  very  strong  in  this  way.  I 
think  Alan  is  always  very  eager  to  see  you  at  your  best, 
and  probably  as  your  friendship  goes  on  he  will  be  more 
solicitous  for  you  than  for  himself.  I  should  say  that  he 
would  be  likely  to  sink  himself  in  you.  I  wonder  if  you 
realize  what  a  passionately  loyal  soul  he  is." 

Michael  flushed  with  pleasure  at  this  appreciation  of  his 
friend,  and  his  ambition  went  flying  over  to  Basingstead 
Major  to  inspire  Alan  to  bat  his  best.  Then  he  burst 
forth  in  praise  of  him ;  'he  spoke  of  his  changelessness,  his 
freedom  from  moods,  his  candor  and  toleration  and  modesty. 

"But  the  terrible  thing  is,"  said  Michael  suddenly,  "that 
I  always  feel  that  without  noticing  it  I  shall  one  day  leave 
Alan  behind." 

"But  when  you  turn  back,  you'll  find  him  just  the  same, 
don't  forget;  and  you  may  be  glad  that  he  did  not  come 
with  you.  You  may  be  glad  that  from  his  slowness  you  can 
find  an  indication  of  the  road  that  I'm  sure  you  yourself 


41 8  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

will  one  day  try  to  take.  Alan  will  travel  by  it  all  his  life. 
You'll  travel  by  it  ultimately.  Alan  will  never  really 
appreciate  its  beauty.  You  will.  That  will  be  your  recom- 
pense for  what  you  suffer  before  you  find  it." 

Mrs.  Ross,  as  if  to  conceal  emotion,  turned  quickly  to 
romp  with  her  son.    Then  she  looked  at  Michael: 

''And  haven't  you  already  once  or  twice  left  Alan  be- 
hind?" 

Suddenly  to  Michael  her  gray  eyes  seemed  accusing. 

"Yes,  I  suppose  I  have,"  he  granted.  "But  isn't  that 
the  reason  why  my  personality  aiiects  more  people  than  his? 
You  said  just  now  that  experience  was  only  the  setting,  but 
I'm  sure  in  my  case  it's  more  than  a  mere  setting." 

And  even  as  he  spoke  all  his  experience  seemed  to  cloud 
his  brow,  knitting  and  lining  it  with  perplexed  wrinkles. 

"Mrs.  Ross,  you  won't  think  me  very  rude  if  I  say  you 
always  remind  me  of  Pallas  Athene?  You  always  have, 
you  know.  At  first  it  was  just  a  vague  outward  resem- 
blance, because  you're  tall  and  sort  of  cool-looking,  and  I 
really  think  your  nose  is  rather  Greek,  if  you  don't  mind 
my  saying  so." 

"Oh,  Michael,"  Mrs.  Ross  smiled.  "I  think  you're 
even  more  unalterable  than  Alan.  I  seem  to  see  you  as 
a  little  boy  again,  when  you  talk  like  that." 

Michael,  however,  was  too  keen  on  the  scent  of  his 
comparison  to  be  put  of?  by  smiles,  and  he  went  on  eagerly: 

"Now  I  realize  that  you  actually  are  like  Athene.  You're 
one  of  those  people  who  seem  to  have  sprung  into  the  world 
fully  armed.     I  can't  imagine  that  you  were  ever  young." 

Mrs.  Ross  laughed  outright  at  this. 

"Wait  a  minute,"  cried  Michael.  "Or  ever  old  for 
that  matter.  And  you  know  all  about  me.  No,  you 
needn't  shake  your  head  like  that.     Because  you  do." 

Young  Kenneth  was  so  much  roused  by  Michael's  tri- 
umphant asseverations  that  he  began  to  shout  and  kick  in 


GRAY    EYES  419 


delighted  tune  and  fling  the  apples  from  him  with  a  vigor 
that  he  had  never  yet  reached. 

"You  know,"  Michael  continued  breathlessly,  while  the 
boy  on  the  grass  gurgled  his  endorsement  of  every  word. 
"You  know  that  I'm  old  for  my  age,  that  I've  already 
done  things  that  other  chaps  at  school  only  whisper  about." 

He  stopped  suddenly,  for  the  gray  eyes  had  become  like 
rocks  and,  though  the  baby  still  panted  ecstatically,  there 
fell  a  chill. 

"I'm  very  sorry  to  hear  it,"  said  Mrs.  Ross. 

"Well,  why  did  you  lead  me  on  to  confide  in  you?" 
said  Michael  sullenly.     "I  thought  you  would  sympathize." 

"Michael,  I  apologize,"  she  said,  melting.  "I  didn't 
mean  to  hurt  your  feelings.  I  daresay — ah,  Michael,  you 
see  how  easily  all  my  shining  armor  falls  to  pieces." 

"Another  broken  bottle,"  Michael  muttered. 

He  got  up  abruptly  and,  though  there  were  tears  in  his 
eyes,  she  could  not  win  him  back. 

"Dear  old  boy,  do  tell  me.  Don't  make  the  mistake 
of  going  back  into  yourself,  because  I  failed  you  for  a 
moment." 

Mrs.  Ross  held  out  her  hand,  but  Michael  walked  away. 

"You  don't  understand,"  he  turned  to  say.  "You 
couldn't  understand.  And  I  don't  v/ant  you  to  be  able  to 
understand.  You  mustn't  think  I'm  sulking,  or  being  rude, 
and  really  I'd  rather  you  didn't  understand.  That  boy  of 
yours  won't  ever  want  you  to  understand.  I  don't  think 
he'll  ever  do  anything  that  isn't  perfectly  comprehensible." 

"Michael,"  said  Mrs.  Ross,  "don't  be  so  bitter.  You'll 
be  sorry  soon." 

"Soon?"  asked  Michael,  fiercely.  "Soon?  Why  soon? 
What's  going  to  happen  to  make  me  sorry  soon?  Some- 
thing is  going  to  happen.     I  know.     I  feel  it." 

He  fled  through  the  wind-frayed  orchard  up  the  hillside. 
"With  his  back  against  the  tower  called  Grogg's  Folly  he 


420  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

looked  over  four  counties  and  vowed  he  would  go  heedless 
of  everything  that  stood  between  him  and  experience.  He 
would  deny  himself  nothing;  he  would  prove  to  the  hilt 
everything. 

"I  must  know,"  he  wrung  out  of  himself.  "Everything 
that  has  happened  must  have  happened  for  some  reason. 
I  will  believe  that.  I  can't  believe  in  God  until  I  can 
believe  in  myself.     And  how  can  I  believe  in  myself  yet?" 

The  four  counties  under  September's  munificence  mocked 
him  with  their  calm. 

"I  know  that  all  these  people  at  Cobble  Place  are  all 
right,"  he  groaned.  *'I  know  that,  just  as  I  know  Virgil  is 
a  great  poet.  But  I  never  knew  Virgil  was  great  until 
I  read  Swinburne.  Oh,  I  want  to  be  calm  and  splendid 
and  proud  of  myself,  but  I  want  to  understand  life  while 
I'm  alive.  I  want  to  believe  in  immortality,  but  in  case 
I  never  can  be  convinced  of  it  I  want  to  be  convinced 
of  something.  Everything  seems  to  be  tumbling  down 
nowadays.  What's  so  absurd  is  that  nobody  can  understand 
anybody  else,  let  alone  the  universe.  Mrs.  Ross  can  under- 
stand why  I  like  Alan,  but  she  can't  understand  why  I 
want  love.  Viner  can  understand  why  I  get  depressed, 
but  he  can't  understand  why  I  can't  be  cured  immediately. 
Wilmot  could  understand  why  I  wanted  to  read  his  rotten 
books,  but  he  can't  understand  why  the  South  African 
war  upset  me.  And  so  on  with  everybody.  I'm  determined 
to  understand  everybody,"  Michael  vowed,  "even  if  I 
can't  have  faith,"  he  sighed  to  the  four  counties. 


CHAPTER  XVI 
BLUE   EYES 

MICHAEL  managed  to  avoid  during  the  rest  of  the 
week  any  reference,  direct  or  indirect,  to  his  in- 
terrupted conversation  with  Mrs.  Ross,  though 
he  fancied  a  reproachfulness  in  her  manner  toward  him, 
especially  at  the  moment  of  saying  good-bye.  He  was  not 
therefore  much  surprised  to  receive  a  letter  from  her  soon 
after  he  was  back  in  Carlington  Road. 

Cobble  Place^ 

September   i8th. 
My  dear  Michael: 

I  have  blamed  myself  entirely  for  what  happened  the 
other  day.  I  should  have  been  honored  by  your  confidence, 
and  I  cannot  think  why  a  wretched  old-fashioned  priggish- 
ness  should  have  shown  itself  just  when  I  least  wished  it 
would.  I  confess  I  was  shocked  for  a  moment,  and  perhaps 
I  horridly  imagined  more  than  you  meant  to  imply.  If  I 
had  paused  to  think,  I  should  have  known  that  your  desire 
to  confide  in  me  was  alone  enough  to  prove  that  you  were 
fully  conscious  of  the  effect  of  anything  you  may  have 
done.  And  after  all  in  any  sin — forgive  me  if  I'm  using 
too  strong  a  word  under  a  misapprehension — it  is  the  effect 
which  counts  most  deeply. 

I'm  inclined  to  think  that  in  all  you  do  through  life,  you 
will  chiefly  have  to  think  of  the  effect  of  it  on  other  people. 
I  believe  that  you  yourself  are  one  of  those  characters  that 
never  radically  deteriorate.  This  is  rather  a  dangerous 
statement  to  make  to  anyone  so  young  as  you  are.     But 

421 


422  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

I'm  sure  you  are  wise  enough  not  to  use  ft  in  justification 
of  any  wrong  impulse.  Do  always  remember,  my  dear  boy, 
that  however  unscathed  you  feel  yourself  to  be,  you  must 
never  assume  that  to  be  the  case  with  anyone  else.  I  am 
really  dreadfully  distressed  to  think  that  by  my  own  want 
of  sympathy  on  a  crucial  occasion  I  have  had  to  try  to  put 
into  a  letter  what  could  only  have  been  hammered  out  in  a 
long  talk.  And  we  did  hammer  out  something  the  other 
day.  Or  am  I  too  optimistic?  Write  to  me  some  time 
and  reassure  me  a  little,  for  I'm  truly  worried  about  you, 
and  so  indignant  with  my  stupid  self.  Best  love  from  us 
all, 

Your  affectionate 

Maud  Ross. 

Michael  merely  pondered  this  letter  coldly.  He  was  still 
under  the  influence  of  the  disappointment,  and  when  he 
answered  Mrs.  Ross  he  answered  her  without  regard  to 
any  wound  he  might  inflict. 

64  Carlington  Road^ 
Sunday. 
Dear  Mrs.  Ross: 

Please  don't  bother  any  more  about  it.  I  ought  to  have 
known  better.  I  don't  think  it  was  such  a  very  crucial 
occasion.  The  weather  is  frightfully  hot,  and  I  don't  feel 
much  like  playing  footer  this  term.  I'm  reading  Dante, 
not  in  Italian,  of  course.  London  is  as  near  the  Inferno 
as  anything,  I  should  think.  It's  horribly  hot.  Excuse 
this  short  letter,  but  I've  nothing  to  say. 

Yours   affectionately, 

Michael. 

Mrs.  Ross  made  one  more  brief  attempt  to  recapture  him, 
but  Michael  put  her  off  with  the  most  superficial  gossip  of 
school-life,  and  she  did  not  try  again.  He  meant  to  play 
football,  notwithstanding  the  hot  weather,  but,  finding  that 
his  boots  were  worn  out,  he  continually  put  off  buying 
another  pair  and  let  himself  drift  into  October  before  he 


BLUE    EYES  423 


began.  Then  he  hurt  his  leg,  and  had  to  stop  for  a  while. 
This  spoiled  his  faint  chance  for  the  First  Fifteen,  and  in 
the  end  he  gave  up  football  altogether  without  much  regret. 

Games  were  a  great  impediment  after  all,  when  October's 
thin  blue  skies  and  sheen  of  pearl-soft  airs  led  him  on  to 
dream  along  the  autumnal  streets.  Sometimes  he  would 
wander  by  himself  through  the  groves  of  Hyde  Park  and 
Kensington  Gardens,  or  on  some  secluded  green  chair  he 
would  sit  reading  Verlaine,  while  continuously  about  him 
the  slow  leaves  of  the  great  planes  swooped  and  fluttered 
down  ambiguously  like  silent  birds. 

One  Saturday  afternoon  he  was  sitting  thus  when 
through  the  silver  fog  that  on  every  side  wrought  the 
ultimate  dissolution  of  the  view  Michael  saw  the  slim  figure 
of  a  girl  walking  among  the  trees.  His  mind  was  gay 
with  Verlaine's  delicate  and  fantastic  songs,  and  this  slim 
girl,  as  she  moved  wraith-like  over  the  ground  marbled 
with  fallen  leaves,  seemed  to  express  the  cadence  of  the 
verse  which  had  been  sighing  across  the  printed  page. 

The  girl  with  dow^ncast  glance  walked  on,  seeming  to 
follow  her  path  softly  as  one  might  follow  through  em- 
broidery a  thread  of  silk,  and  as  she  drew  nearer  to 
Michael  out  of  the  fog's  enchantment  she  lost  none  of  her 
indefinite  charm;  but  she  seemed  still  exquisite  and  silver- 
dewed.  There  was  no  one  else  in  sight,  and  now  already 
Michael  could  hear  the  lisping  of  her  steps;  then  a  breath 
of  air  among  the  tree-tops  more  remote  sent  floating,  sway- 
ing, fluttering  about  her  a  flight  of  leaves.  She  paused, 
startled  by  the  sudden  shower,  and  at  that  moment  the 
down-going  autumnal  sun  glanced  wanly  through  the 
glades  and  lighted  her  gossamer-gold  hair  with  kindred 
gleams.  The  girl  resumed  her  dreaming  progress,  and 
Michael  now  frankly  stared  in  a  rapture.  She  was  dressed 
in  deepest  green  boxcloth,  and  the  heavy  folds  that  clung  to 
that  lissome  form  made  her  ankles  behind  great  pompons  of 


424  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

black  silk  seem  astonishingly  slender.  One  hand  was 
masked  by  a  small  mufF  of  astrakhan;  the  other  curled 
behind  to  gather  close  her  skirt.  Her  hair  tied  back  with 
a  black  bow  sprayed  her  tall  neck  with  its  beaten  gold. 
She  came  along  downcast  until  she  was  within  a  few  feet 
of  Michael;  then  she  looked  at  him.  He  smiled,  and  her 
mouth  when  she  answered  him  with  answering  smile  was 
like  a  flower  whose  petals  have  been  faintly  stirred.  In- 
deed it  was  scarcely  a  smile,  scarcely  more  than  a  tremor, 
but  her  eyes  deepened  suddenly,  and  Michael  drawn  into 
their  dusky  blue  exclaimed  simply: 

"I  say,  I've  been  watching  you  for  a  long  time." 

*'I  don't  think  you  ought  to  talk  to  me  like  this  in  Ken- 
sington Gardens.  Why,  there's  not  a  soul  in  sight.  And  I 
oughtn't  to  let  you  talk." 

Her  voice  was  low  with  a  provocative  indolence  of  tone, 
and  while  she  spoke  her  lips  scarcely  moved,  so  that  their 
shape  was  never  for  an  instant  lost,  and  the  words  seemed 
to  escape  like  unwilling  fugitives. 

''What  are  you  reading?"  she  idly  asked,  tapping 
Michael's  book  with  her  muff. 

"Verlaine." 

"French?" 

He  nodded,  and  she  pouted  in  delicious  disapproval  of 
his  learned  choice. 

"Fancy  reading  French  unless  you've  got  to." 

"But  I  enjoy  these  poems,"  Michael  declared.  "As  a 
matter  of  fact  you're  just  like  them.  At  least  you  were 
when  I  saw  you  first  in  the  distance.  Now  you're  more 
real  somehow." 

Her  gaze  had  wandered  during  his  comparison  and 
Michael,  a  little  hurt  by  her  inattention,  asked  if  she  were 
expecting  somebody. 

"Oh,  no.     I  just  came  out  for  a  walk.     I  get  a  headache 


BLUE    EYES  425 


if  I  stay  in  all  the  afternoon.  Now  I  must  go  on.  Good- 
bye." 

She  scattered  with  a  light  kick  the  little  heap  of  leaves 
that  during  their  conversation  she  had  been  amassing,  and 
with  a  half-mocking  wave  of  her  muff  prepared  to  leave 
him. 

"I  say,  don't  tear  off,"  Michael  begged.  "Where  do 
you  live?" 

"Oh,  a  long  way  from  here,"  she  said. 

"But  where?" 

"West  Kensington." 

"So  do  I,"  cried  Michael,  thinking  to  himself  that  all  the 
gods  of  luck  and  love  were  fighting  on  his  side  this  after- 
noon.    "We'll  walk  home  together." 

"Shall  we?"  murmured  the  girl,  poised  on  bent  toes  as 
if  she  were  minded  to  flee  from  him  in  a  breath. 

"Oh,  we  must,"  vowed  Michael. 

"But   I  mustn't  dawdle,"  she  protested. 

"Of  course  not,"  he  affirmed  with  almost  an  inflexion 
of  puritanical  rigor. 

"You're  leaving  your  book,  stupid,"  she  laughed,  as  he 
rose  to  take  his  place  by  her  side. 

"I  wouldn't  have  minded,  because  all  that's  in  that  book 
is  in  you,"  he  declared.  "I  think  I'll  leave  it  behind  for  a 
lark." 

She  ran  back  lightly  and  opened  it  to  see  whether  his 
name  were  on  the  front  page. 

"Michael  Fane,"  she  murmured.  "What  does  'ex  libris* 
mean?"  Yet  even  as  she  asked  the  question  her  concen- 
tration failed,  and  she  seemed  not  to  hear  his  answer. 

"You  didn't  really  want  to  know,  you  funny  girl,"  said 
Michael. 

"Know  what?"  she  echoed,  blinking  round  at  him  over 

her  shoulder  as  they  walked  on. 

"The  meaning  of  'ex  libris.'  " 
28 


426  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"But  I  found  out  your  name,"  she  challenged.  "And 
you  don't  know  mine." 

"What  is  it?"  Michael  dutifully  asked. 

"I  don't  think  I'll  tell  you." 

"Ah,  do." 

"Well,  then,  it's  Lily — and  I've  got  a  sister  called  Doris.'^ 

"How  old  are  you?" 

"How  old  do  you  think?" 

"Seventeen?"    Michael   hazarded. 

She  nodded.  It  was  on  the  tip  of  his  tongue  to  claim 
kinship  on  the  score  of  their  similar  years,  but  discretion 
defeated  honesty,  and  he  said  aloofly,  gazing  up  at  the  sky: 

"I'm  nineteen  and  a  half." 

She  told  him  more  as  they  mingled  with  the  crowds  in 
Kensington  High  Street,  that  her  mother  was  Mrs.  Haden, 
who  recited  in  public  sometimes,  that  her  sister  Doris 
wanted  to  go  on  the  stage,  and  that  they  lived  in  Trelawny 
Road. 

"I  know  Trelawny  Road,"  Michael  interjected,  and  in 
the  gathering  crowds  she  was  perforce  closer  to  him,  so 
that  he  was  fain  to  guide  her  gently  past  the  glittering 
shops,  immensely  conscious  of  the  texture  of  her  dress. 
They  emerged  into  wider,  emptier  pavements,  and  the  wind 
came  chilly  down  from  Camden  Hill,  so  that  she  held 
her  muff  against  her  cheek,  framing  its  faint  rose.  Twi- 
light drew  them  closer,  and  Michael,  wishful  of  an  even 
less  frequented  pavement,  suggested  they  should  cross  the 
road  by  Holland  Park.  A  moment  she  paused  while  a 
scarlet  omnibus  clattered  past,  then  she  ran  swiftly  to  where 
the  trees  overhung  the  railings.  It  was  exhilarating  to 
follow  her  over  the  w^ooden  road  that  answ^ered  to  his 
footsteps  like  castanets,  and  as  he  caught  up  with  her  to 
fondle  her  bent  arm.  Their  walk  died  away  to  a  saunter, 
while  the  street-lamps  beamed  upon  them  with  longer  in- 
tervals of  dark  between  each  succeeding  lampshine.     More 


BLUE    EYES  427 


slowly  still  they  moved  toward  West  Kensington  and 
parting.  Her  arm  was  twined  round  his  like  ivy,  and 
their  two  hands  came  together  like  leaves.  At  last  the 
turning  she  must  take  appeared  on  the  other  side  of  the 
road,  and  again  she  ran  and  again  he  caught  her  arm. 
But  this  time  it  was  still  warm  with  long  contact  and 
divinely  familiar,  since  but  for  a  moment  had  it  been  re- 
linquished. The  dim  side-street  enfolded  them,  and  no 
dismaying  passers-by  startled  their  intercourse. 

"But  soon  it  will  be  Trelawny  Road,"  she  whisperea. 
"Then    kiss    me    quickly,"    said    Michael.      "Lily,    you 
must." 

It  was  in  the  midmost  gloom  between  two  lamps  that 
they  kissed  first. 
"Lily,    once   again." 
"No,  no,"  she  whispered. 

"But  you're  mine,"  he  called  exultantly.  "You  are. 
You  know  you  are." 

"Perhaps,"  she  whispered,  but,  even  as  his  arms  drew  her 
toward  him,  she  slipped  from  his  embrace,  laughed  very 
low  and  sweet,  bounded  forward,  waved  her  muff,  ran 
swiftly  to  the  next  lamp-post,  paused  and  blew  him  kisses, 
then  vanished  round  the  corner  of  her  road. 

But  a  long  time  ago  they  had  said  they  would  meet 
to-morrow,  and  as  Michael  stood  in  a  maze  all  the  clocks 
in  the  w^orld  ding-donged  in  his  ears  the  hour  of  the  tryst. 
There  was  only  one  thing  to  do  for  the  expression  of 
his  joy,  and  that  was  to  run  as  hard  as  he  could.  So  he 
ran,  and  when  he  saw  two  coal-holes,  he  would  jump  from 
one  to  the  other,  rejoicing  in  the  ring  of  their  metal  covers. 
And  all  the  time  out  of  breath  he  kept  saying,  "I'm  in 
love,  in  love,  in  love." 

Every  passer-by  into  whose  eyes  he  looked  seemed  to  have 
the  most  beautiful  expression;  every  poor  man  seemed  to 
demand  that  he  should  stay  a  while  from  his  own  joy  to 


428  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

comfort  him.  The  lamp-posts  bloomed  like  tropic  flowers, 
swaying  and  nodding  languorously.  Every  house  took  on  a 
look  of  the  most  unutterable  completeness;  the  horses  gal- 
loped like  Arabian  barbs;  policemen  expanded  like  benefi- 
cent genii;  errand  boys  whistled  like  nightingales;  all 
familiarity  was  enchanted,  and  seven-leagued  boots  took 
him  forward  as  easily  as  if  he  traveled  a  world  subdued 
to  the  effortless  transitions  of  sleep.  Carlington  Road 
stretched  before  him  bright,  kindly,  beckoning  to  his  ingress. 
Against  the  lighted  entrance-hall  of  Number  64  Michael 
saw  the  red  and  amber  sparrows  like  humming-birds,  ruby- 
throated,  topaz-winged.  The  parlor-maid's  cap  and  apron 
were  of  snow^,  and  the  banisters  of  sandalwood. 

Michael  w^ent  to  bed  early  that  he  might  meet  her  in 
dreams,  but  still  for  a  long  time  he  sat  by  his  window  peer- 
ing at  the  tawny  moon,  while  at  intervals  trains  went 
quickly  past  sparkling  and  swift  as  lighted  fuses.  The 
scent  of  leaves  lying  in  the  gardens  all  along  Carlington 
Road  was  vital  with  the  airs  from  which  she  had  been 
evoked  that  afternoon,  and  his  only  regret  was  that  his 
bedroom  looked  out  on  precisely  the  opposite  direction  from 
that  w^here  now  she  was  sleeping.  Then  he  himself  became 
envious  of  sleep,  and  undressed  quickly  like  one  who  stands 
hot-footed  by  a  lake's  edge,  eager  for  the  water's  cool. 

Michael  met  Lily  next  day  by  the  dusky  corner  of  a 
street  whose  gradual  loss  of  outline  he  had  w^atched  occur 
through  a  patient  hour.  It  was  not  that  Lily  was  late, 
but  that  Michael  was  so  early.  Yet  in  his  present  mood 
of  elation  he  could  enjoy  communion  even  with  bricks  and 
mortar.  He  used  every  guileful  ruse  to  cheat  time  of  his 
determined  moment.  He  would  walk  along  with  closed 
eyes  for  ten  paces  and  with  open  eyes  for  ten  paces,  the 
convention  with  himself,  almost  the  wager,  being  that  Lily 
should  appear  while  his  eyes  were  closed.  It  would  have 
been  truly  disappointing  had  she  swung  round  the  corner 


BLUE    EYES  429 


while  his  eyes  were  open.  But  as  it  still  lacked  half  an 
hour  of  her  appointment,  there  was  not  much  fear  of  that. 
Then,  as  really  her  time  drew  near,  a  tenser  game  was 
played,  by  which  Lily  was  to  appear  when  his  left  foot 
was  advanced.  This  match  between  odd  and  even  lasted 
until  in  all  its  straightness  of  perfect  division  six  o'clock 
was  inscribed  upon  his  watch.  No  other  hour  could  so 
well    have    suited    her    form. 

Now  began  the  best  game  of  all,  since  it  was  played  less 
with  himself  than  with  fortune.  Michael  went  to  the  next 
turning,  and,  hiding  himself  from  the  view  of  Trelawny 
Road,  only  allowed  himself  to  peep  at  each  decade.  At 
a  hundred  and  sixty-three  he  said  "She's  in  sight,"  one  hun- 
dred and  sixty-four,  "she's  coming."  The  century  was 
eliminated,  too  cumbersome  for  his  fiery  enumeration. 
Sixty-five,  "I  know  she  is."  Sixty-six,  sixty-seven,  sixty- 
eight,  sixty-nine!  One  hundred  and  seventy  was  said 
slowly,  with  an  exquisite  dragging  deliberation.  Then 
Michael  could  look,  and  there  she  was  with  muff  signaling 
through  the  azure  mists  of  twilight. 

"I  say,  I  told  mother  about  you,"  murmured  Lily.  "And 
she  said,  Why  didn't  you  ask  him  to  come  in  to  tea?'  But 
of  course  she  doesn't  know  I'm  meeting  you  this  evening. 
I'm  supposed  to  be  going  to  church." 

Michael's  heart  leaped  at  the  thought  that  soon  he  would 
be  able  to  see  her  in  her  own  home  among  her  own  belong- 
mgs,  so  that  in  future  no  conjured  picture  of  her  would 
be  incomplete. 

"Rather  decent  of  your  mother,"  he  said. 

"Oh,  well,  she's  got  to  be  very  easy-going  and  all  that, 
though  of  course  she  doesn't  like  us  to  get  talked  about! 
What  shall  we  do  now?" 

"Walk  about,  I  suppose,"  said  Michael.  "Unless  we 
get  on  top  of  a  bus  and  ride  somewhere?     Why  not  ride 


430  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

up  to  Hammersmith  Broadway  and  then  walk  along  the 
towing-path  ?" 

They  found  a  seat  full  in  the  fore  wind's  face,  but  yet 
the  ride  w^as  all  too  short,  and  almost  by  the  time  Michael 
had  finished  securing  the  waterproof  rug  in  which  they  sat 
incapable  of  movement,  so  tightly  w^re  they  braced  in,  it 
was  time  to  undo  it  again  and  dismount.  While  the  church 
bells  were  ringing,  they  crossed  Hammersmith  Suspension 
Bridge  ethereal  in  the  creeping  river-mist  and  faintly  mo- 
tionable  like  a  ship  at  anchor.  Then  they  wandered  by  the 
river  that  lapped  the  dead  reeds  and  gurgled  along  the  base 
of  the  shelving  clay  bank.  The  wind  drearily  stirred  the 
osier-beds,  and  from  time  to  time  the  dull  tread  of  in- 
definite passing  forms  was  heard  upon  the  sodden  path. 
Michael  could  feel  the  humid  fog  lying  upon  Lily's  sleeve, 
and  when  he  drew  her  cheek  to  his  own  it  was  bedewed 
with  the  falling  night.  But  when  their  lips  met,  the  mois- 
ture and  October  chill  were  all  consumed,  and  like  a  burn- 
ing rose  she  flamed  upon  his  vision.  Words  to  express  his 
adoration  tumbled  around  him  like  nightmare  speech,  eva- 
sive, mocking,  grotesquely  inadequate. 

* 'There  are  no  words  to  say  how  much  I  love  to  hold 
you,  Lily,"  he  complained.  "It's  like  holding  a  flower. 
And  even  in  the  dark  I  can  see  your  eyes." 

"I  can't  see  yours,"  she  murmured,  and  therefore  nestled 
closer.     "I  like  you  to  kiss  me,"  she  sighed. 

''Oh,  why  do  you?"  Michael  asked.     "Why  me?" 

"You're  nice,"  she  less  than  whispered. 

"Lily,  I  do  love  you." 

And  Michael  bit  his  lip  at  the  close  of  "love"  for  the 
sweet  pain  of  making  the  foolish  word  more  powerful, 
more  long. 

"What  a  funny  husky  voice,"  she  murmured  in  her  own 
deep  indolent  tones. 


BLUE    EYES  431 


"Do  you  like  me  to  call  you  'darling'  or  'dearest'  best?" 
he  asked. 

"Both." 

"Ah,  but  which  do  you  like  best?" 

To  Michael  the  two  words  were  like  melodies  which  he 
had  lately  learned  to  play.  Indeed  they  seemed  to  him  his 
own  melodies  never  played  before,  and  he  was  eager  for 
Lily  to  pronounce  judgment. 

"Why  do  you  ask  questions?"  she  wondered. 

"Say  'dearest'  to  me,"  Michael  begged. 

"No,  no,"  she  blushed  against  his  heart. 

"But  say  which  you  like  best,"  he  urged.  "Darling  or 
dearest?" 

"Well,  darling,"  she  pouted. 

"You've  said  it,"  cried  Michael  rapturously.  "Now  you 
can  say  it  of  your  own  accord.  Oh,  Lily,  say  it  when  you 
kiss  me." 

"But  supposing  I  never  kiss  you  ever  again?"  asked 
Lily,  pulling  away  from  his  arms.  "And  besides  we  must 
go  back." 

"Well,  we  needn't  hurry." 

"Not  if  you  come  at  once,"  she  agreed. 

One  more  kiss,  one  more  gliding  dreaming  walk,  one 
more  pause  to  bid  the  river  farewell  from  the  towering 
bridge,  one  more  wrestle  with  the  waterproof-rug,  one 
more  slow,  lingering  and  then  suddenly  swift  escaping  fin- 
ger, one  more  wave  of  the  muff,  one  last  aerial  salutation, 
and  she  was  gone  till  Wednesday. 

Michael  was  left  alone  between  the  tall  thin  houses  of 
Kensington,  but  beneath  his  feet  he  seemed  to  feel  the 
world  swing  round  through  space;  and  all  the  tall  thin 
houses,  all  the  fluted  lamp-posts,  all  the  clustering  chimney- 
pots reeled  about  him  in  the  ecstasy  of  his  aroused  exist- 
ence. 


CHAPTER  XVII 
LILY 

WHEN   Michael  came  into  the  dining-room  after 
he  had  left  Lily,  his  mother  said: 
''Dearest   boy,    what   have   you   been    doing? 
Your  eyes  are  shining  like  stars." 

Here  was  the  opportunity  to  tell  her  about  Lily,  but 
Michael  could  not  avail  himself  of  it.  These  last  two  days 
seemed  as  yet  too  incomplete  for  revelation.  Somehow  he 
felt  that  he  was  creating  a  work  of  art,  and  that  to  tell  his 
mother  of  conception  or  progress  would  be  to  spoil  the 
perfection  of  his  impulse.  There  was  only  one  person  on 
earth  to  whom  he  could  confide  this  cataclysmic  experience, 
and  that  was  Alan.  He  and  Alan  had  dreamed  enough  to- 
gether in  the  past  to  make  him  unashamed  to  announce  at 
last  his  foothold  on  reality.  But  supposing  Alan  were  to 
laugh,  as  he  had  laughed  over  the  absurdity  of  Kathleen? 
Such  a  reception  of  his  news  would  ruin  their  friendship; 
and  yet  if  their  friendship  could  not  endure  the  tale  of  true 
love,  was  it  not  already  ruined?  He  must  tell  Alan,  at 
whatever  cost.  And  where  should  he  tell  him?  Such  a 
secret  must  not  be  lightly  entrusted.  Time  and  place  must 
come  harmoniously,  befalling  with  that  rare  felicity  which 
salutes  the  inevitable  hours  of  a  human  life. 

"Mother,"  said  Michael,  "would  you  mind  if  I  stayed 
the  night  over  at  Richmond?" 

"To-night?"    Mrs.  Fane  echoed  in  astonishment. 
432 


LILY 433 

'Well,  perhaps  not  to-night,"  conceded  Michael  un- 
willingly.    "But  to-morrow  night?" 

"To-morrow  night  by  all  means,"  Mrs.  Fane  agreed. 
/'Nothing  has  happened?"  she  asked  anxiously.  "You 
seem  so  flushed  and  strange." 

"I'm  just  the  same  as  usual,"  Michael  declared.  "It's 
hot  in  this  room.     I  think  I'll  take  a  short  walk." 

"But  you've  been  out  all  the  afternoon,"  Mrs.  Fane 
protested. 

"Oh,  well,  I've  nothing  to  do  at  home." 

"You're  not  feverish?" 

"No,  no,  mother,"  Michael  affirmed,  disengaging  his 
parched  hand  from  her  solicitous  touch.  "But  you  know 
I  often  feel  restless." 

She  released  him,  tenderly  smiling;  and  for  one  moment 
he  nearly  threw  himself  down  beside  her,  covetous  of  child- 
hood's petting.  But  the  impulse  spent  itself  before  he 
acted  upon  it,  and  soon  he  was  wandering  toward 
Trelawny  Road.  How  empty  the  corner  of  it  looked,  how 
stark  and  melancholy  soared  the  gray  houses  guarding  its 
consecrated  entrance,  how  solitary  shone  the  lamp-posts, 
and  how  sadly  echoed  the  footsteps  of  people  going  home. 
Yet  only  three  hours  ago  they  had  met  on  this  very  flag- 
stone that  must  almost  have  palpitated  to  the  pressure  of 
her  shoes. 

Michael  walked  on  until  he  stood  opposite  her  house. 
There  was  a  light  in  the  bay  window  by  the  front  door; 
perhaps  she  would  come  out  to  post  a  letter.  O  breathless 
thought!  Surely  he  heard  the  sound  of  a  turning  handle. 
Ah,  why  had  he  not  begged  her  to  draw  aside  the  blind  at 
a  fixed  time  that  he  could  be  cured  of  his  longing  by  the 
vision  of  her  darling  form  against  the  pane?  How  bitter 
was  the  irony  of  her  sitting  behind  that  brooding  window- 
pane,  unconscious  of  him.  Two  days  must  crawl  past  be- 
fore she  would  meet  him  again,  before  he  would  touch  her 


434  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

hand,  look  actually  into  her  eyes,  watch  every  quiver  and 
curve  of  her  mouth.  Places  would  be  enriched  with  the 
sight  of  her,  while  he  ached  with  the  torment  of  love. 
School  must  drag  through  ten  intolerable  hours;  he  must 
chatter  with  people  unaware  of  her;  and  she  must  live 
two  days  apart  from  his  life,  two  days  whose  irresponsible 
minutes  and  loveless  occupations  made  him  burn  with 
jealousy  of  time  itself. 

Suddenly  the  door  of  Lily's  house  opened,  and  Michael 
felt  the  blood  course  through  his  body,  flooding  his  heart, 
swaying  his  very  soul.  There  was  a  voice  in  the  glimmering 
hall,  but  not  her  voice.  Nor  was  it  her  form  that  hurried 
down  the  steps.  It  was  only  the  infinitely  fortunate  maid- 
servant, whose  progress  to  the  letter-box  he  watched  with 
a  sickening  disappointment.  There  went  one  who  every 
day  could  see  Lily.  Every  morning  she  was  privileged  to 
wake  her  from  her  rose-fired  sleep.  Every  night  she  could 
gossip  with  her  outside  the  magical  door  of  her  room.  Lily 
must  sometimes  descend  into  the  kitchen,  and  there  they 
must  talk.  And  yet  the  idiotic  creature  was  staring  curi- 
ously at  some  unutterably  dull  policeman,  and  wasting 
moments  she  did  not  appreciate.  Then  a  leaping  thought 
came  to  Michael,  that  if  she  wasted  enough  time  Lily 
might  look  round  the  front  door  in  search  of  her.  But  too 
soon  for  such  an  event  the  maid-servant  pattered  back;  the 
door  slammed;  and  only  the  window-panes  of  dull  gold 
brooded  immutably.  How  long  before  Lily  went  up  to 
bed?  And  did  she  sleep  in  a  room  that  fronted  the  road? 
Michael  could  bear  it  no  longer  and  turned  away  from 
the  exasperation  of  her  withlield  presence;  and  he  made  up 
his  mind  that  he  must  know  every  detail  of  her  daily  life 
before  he  again  came  sighing  ineffectively  like  this  in  the 
night-time. 

Michael  was  vexed  to  find  that  he  could  not  even  con- 
jure Lily  to  his  side  in  sleep,  but  that  even  there  he  must 


LILY 435 

be  surrounded  by  the  tiresome  people  of  ordinary  life. 
However,  there  was  always  a  delicious  moment,  just  before 
he  lost  complete  consciousness,  when  the  image  of  her  dis- 
solved and  materialized  elusively  above  the  nebulous  con- 
fines of  semi-reality;  while  always  at  the  very  instant  of 
awakening  he  was  aware  of  her  moth-winged  kisses  trem- 
bling upon  the  first  liquid  flash  of  daylight. 

In  the  quarter  Michael  suggested  to  Alan  that  he 
should  come  back  to  Richmond  with  him,  and  when  Alan 
looked  a  little  astonished  at  this  Monday  night  proposal, 
he  explained  that  he  had  a  lot  to  talk  over. 

"I  nearly  came  over  at  nine  o'clock  last  night,"  Michael 
announced. 

Alan  seemed  to  realize  that  it  must  indeed  be  something 
of  importance  and  could  scarcely  wait  for  the  time  when 
they  should  be  fast  alone  and  primed  for  confidences. 

After  dinner  Michael  proposed  a  walk  up  Richmond 
Hill,  and,  without  any  appearance  of  strategy,  managed 
to  persuade  Alan  to  rest  awhile  on  one  of  the  seats  along 
the  Terrace.  In  this  late  autumnal  time  there  was  no  view 
of  the  Thames  gleaming  beneath  the  sorcery  of  a  summer 
night.  There  was  nothing  now  but  a  vast  airiness  of  mist 
damascening  the  blades  of  light  with  which  the  street-lamps 
pierced  the  darkness. 

"Pretty  wet,"   said  Alan  distastefully  patting   the  seat. 

"We  needn't  stay  long,  but  it's  rather  ripping,  don't  you 
think?"  Michael  urged.  "Alan,  do  you  remember  once 
we  sat  here  on  a  night  before  exams  at  the  end  of  a  summer 
term?" 


"Yes,  but  it  was  a  jolly  sight  warmer  than  it  is  now," 
said  Alan. 

"I  know.  We  were  in  'whites,'  "  said  Michael  pen- 
sively. "Alan,  I'm  in  love.  I  am  really.  You  mustn't 
laugh.  I  was  a  fool  over  that  first  girl,  but  now  I  am  in 
love.    Alan,  she's  only  seventeen,  and  she  has  hair  the  color 


436  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

of  that  rather  thick  honey  you  get  at  chemists.  Only  it 
isn't  thick,  but  as  foamy  as  a  lemon-sponge.  And  her 
mouth  is  truly  a  bow  and  her  voice  is  gloriously  deep  and 
exciting,  and  her  eyes  are  the  most  extraordinary  blue — 
as  blue  as  ink  in  a  bottle  when  you  hold  it  up  to  the  light, 
and  her  chin  is  in  two  pieces,  rather  like  yours,  and  her 
ankles — well — her  ankles  are  absolutely  divine.  The  ex- 
traordinary luck  is  that  she  loves  mc,  and  I  want  you  to 
meet  her.  I'm  describing  her  very  accurately  like  this 
because  I  don't  want  you  to  think  I'm  raving  or  quoting 
poetry.  You  see,  j^ou  don't  appreciate  poetry,  or  I  could 
describe  her  much  better." 

"I  do  appreciate  poetry,"  protested  Alan. 

"Oh,  I  know  you  like  Kipling  and  Adam  Lindsay  Gor- 
don, but  I  mean  real  poetry.  Well,  I'm  not  going  to  argue 
about  that.  But,  Alan,  you  must  be  sympathetic  and  be- 
lieve that  I  really  am  in  love.  She  has  a  sister  called 
Doris.  I  haven't  met  her  yet,  but  she's  sure  to  be  lovely, 
and  I  think  you  ought  to  fall  in  love  with  her.  Now 
wouldn't  that  be  splendid?  Alan,  yoa  do  believe  I'm  in 
love  this  time?" 

Michael  paused  anxiously. 

"I  suppose  you  must  be,"  said  Alan  slowly. 

''And  you're  glad?"    asked  Michael  a  little  wistfully. 

"What's  going  to  happen?"    Alan  wondered. 

"Well,  of  course  not  much  can  happen  just  now.  Not 
much  can  happen  while  one  is  still  at  school,"  Michael 
went  on.  "But  don't  let's  talk  about  what  is  going  to  be. 
Let's  talk  about  what  is  now." 

Alan  looked  at  him  reproachfully. 

"You  used  to  enjoy  talking  about  the  future." 

"Because  it  used  always  to  be  more  interesting,"  Michael 
explained. 

Alan  rose  from  the  seat  and,  taking  Michael's  arm,  drew 
him  down  the  hill. 


LILY 437 

"And  will  you  come  and  meet  her  sister?"  Michael 
asked. 

''I  expect  so,"  said  Alan. 

^'Hurrah!"    cried  the  lover. 

"I  suppose  this  means  the  end  of  football,  the  end  of 
cricket,  in  fact,  the  end  of  school  as  far  as  you're  con- 
cerned," Alan  complained.     "I  wish  you'd  waited  a  little." 

"I  told  you  I  was  years  older  than  you,"  Michael 
pointed  out,  involuntarily  making  excuses. 

"Only  because  you  would  encourage  yourself  to  think  so. 
Well,  I  hope  everything  will  go  well.  I  hope  you  won't 
take  it  into  your  head  to  think  you've  got  to  marry  her 
immediately,   or  any  rot  like  that." 

"Don't  be  an  ass,"  said  Michael. 

"Well,  you're  such  an  impulsive  devil.  By  Jove,  the 
fellow  that  first  called  you  'Bangs'  was  a  bit  of  a  spotter." 

"It  w^as  Abercrombie,"  Michael  reminded  him. 

"I  should  think  that  was  the  only  clever  thing  he  ever 
did  in  his  life,"  said  Alan. 

"Why,  I  thought  you  considered  him  no  end  of  a  good 
man." 

"He  was  a  good  forward  and  a  good  deep  field,"  Alan 
granted.     "But  that  doesn't  make  him   Shakespeare." 

Thence  onward  war,  or  rather  sport,  the  schoolboys' 
substitute,  ousted  love  from  the  conversation,  and  very  soon 
solo  whist  with  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Merivale  disposed  of  both. 

On  Tuesday  night  Michael,  in  a  fever  of  enthusiasm  for 
Wednesday's  approach,  wrote  a  letter  to  Stella. 

64  Carlington  Road^ 

October,    1900. 
My  dear  Stella: 

After  this  you  needn't  grouse  about  my  letters  being 
dull,  and  you  can  consider  yourself  jolly  honored  because 
I'm  writing  to  tell  you  that  I'm  in  love.  Her  name  is  Lily 
Haden.     Only,  of  course,  please  don't  go  shouting  this  all 


438  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

over  Germany,  and  don't  write  a  gushing  letter  to  mother, 
who  doesn't  know  anything  about  it.  1  shouldn't  tell  you 
if  you  were  in  London,  and  don't  write  back  and  tell  me 
that  you're  in  love  with  some  long-haired  dancing-master 
or  one-eyed  banjo-player,  because  I  know  now  what  love 
is,  and  it's  nothing  like  what  you  think  it  is. 

Lily  is  fair — not  just  fair  like  a  doll,  but  frightfully 
fair.  In  fact,  her  hair  is  like  bubbling  champagne.  I  met 
her  in  Kensington  Gardens.  It  was  truly  romantic,  not  a 
silly,  giggling,  gone-on-a-girl  sort  of  meeting.  I  hope 
you're  getting  on  with  your  music.  I  shall  introduce  Lily 
to  you  just  before  your  first  concert,  and  then  if  you  can't 
play,  well,  you  never  will.  You  might  write  me  a  letter 
and  say  what  you  think  of  my  news.  Not  a  gushing  letter, 
of  course,  but  as  sensible  as  you  can  make  it. 

Your  loving  brother, 

Michael. 

Michael  had  meant  to  say  much  more  to  Stella,  but  ink 
and  paper  seemed  to  violate  the  secluded  airs  in  which  Lily 
had  her  being.  However,  Stella  would  understand  by  his 
writing  at  all  that  he  was  in  deadly  earnest,  and  she  was 
unearthly  enough  to  supply  what  was  missing  from  his 
account. 

Meanwhile  to-morrow  was  Wednesday,  the  mate  of 
Saturday,  and  certainly  of  all  the  days  in  the  week  his 
second  favorite.  Monday,  of  course,  was  vile.  Tuesday 
was  colorless.  Thursday  was  nearly  as  bad  as  Monday. 
Friday  was  irksome  and  only  a  little  less  insipid  than 
Tuesday.  Sunday  had  many  disadvantages.  Saturday  was 
without  doubt  the  best  day,  and  Wednesday  was  next  best, 
for  though  it  was  not  a  half  holiday,  as  long  ago  it  had  been 
at  Randell  House,  it  had  never  quite  lost  its  suggestion  of 
holiday.  Wednesday — the  very  word  said  slowly  had  a 
rich  individuality.  Wednesday — how  promptly  it  sprang 
to  the  lips  for  any  occasion  of  festivity  that  did  not  require 
full-blown  reckless  Saturday.  Monday  was  dull  red. 
Tuesday  was  cream-colored.     Thursday  was  dingy  purple. 


LILY  439 

Friday  was  a  harsh  scarlet,  but  Wednesday  was  vivid  apple- 
green,  or  was  it  a  clear  cool  blue?     One  or  the  other. 

So,  tantalizing  himself  by  not  allowing  a  single  thought 
of  Lily  while  he  was  undressing,  Michael  achieved  bed 
very  easily.  Here  all  trivialities  were  dismissed,  and,  like 
one  who  falls  asleep  when  a  star  is  shining  through  his 
window-pane,  Michael  feel  asleep,  with  Lily  radiant  above 
the  horizon. 

It  was  rather  a  disappointing  Wednesday,  for  Lily  said 
she  could  not  stay  out  more  than  a  minute,  since  her  mother 
was  indoors  and  would  wonder  what  she  was  doing.  How- 
ever, on  Saturday  she  would  see  Michael  again,  and  an- 
nounce to  her  mother  that  she  was  going  to  see  him,  so  that 
on  Sunday  Michael  could  be  invited  to  tea. 

"And  then,  if  mother  likes  you,  why  you  can  often  come 
in,"  Lily  pointed  out.     "That  is,  if  you  want  to." 

"Saturday,"  sighed  Michael. 

"Well,  don't  spoil  the  few  minutes  we've  got  by  being 
miserable." 

"But  I  can't  kiss  you." 

"Think  how  much  nicer  it  will  be  when  we  can  kiss," 
said  Lily  philosophically. 

"I  don't  believe  you  care  a  damn  whether  we  kiss  or 
not,"  said  Michael. 

"Don't  I?"  murmured  Lily,  quickly  touching  his  hand 
and  as  quickly  withdrawing  it  to  the  prison  of  the  muff. 

"Ah,  do  you,  Lily?"  Michael  throbbed  out. 

"Of  course.  Now  I  must  go.  Good-bye.  Don't  forget 
Saturday  in  the  Gardens,  where  we  met  last  time.  Good- 
bye, good-bye,  good-bye!"  She  was  running  from  him 
backward,  forbidding  with  a  wave  his  sudden  step  toward 
her.  "No,  if  you  dare  to  move,  I  shan't  meet  you  on 
Saturday.     Be  good,  be  good." 

By    her    corner    she    paused,    stood    on    tiptoe    for    one 


440  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

provocative  instant,  blew  a  kiss,  laughed  her  elfin  laugh 
and  vanished  more  swift  than  any  Ariel. 

"Damn!"  cried  Michael  sorely,  and  forthwith  set  out 
to  walk  round  West  Kensington  at  five  miles  an  hour,  until 
his  chagrin,  his  disappointment  and  his  heartsick  emptiness 
were  conquered,  or,  at  any  rate,  sufficiently  humbled  to 
make  him  secure  against  unmanly  tears. 

When  Saturday  finally  did  arrive,  Michael  did  not  sit 
reading  Verlaine,  but  wandered  from  tree-trunk  to  tree- 
trunk  like  Orlando  in  despair.  Then  Lily  came  at  last 
sedately,  and  brought  the  good  new^  that  to-morrow 
Michael  should  come  to  tea  at  her  house. 

"But  where  does  your  mother  think  we  met?"  he  asked 
in  perplexity. 

"Oh,  I  told  her  it  was  in  Kensington  Gardens,"  said 
Lily  carelessly. 

"But  doesn't  she  think  I  must  be  an  awful  bounder?" 

"Why,  you  silly,  I  told  her  you  were  at  St.  James' 
School." 

"But  I  never  told  you  I  was  at  school,"  exclaimed 
Michael  somewhat  aghast. 

"I  know  you  didn't,  and  you  never  told  me  that  you 
weren't  eighteen  yet." 

"I  am  in  a  month  or  two,"  said  Michael.  "But,  good 
lord,  who  have  you  been  talking  to?" 

"Ah,  that's  the  greatest  secret  in  the  world,"  laughed 
Lily. 

"Oh,  no,  do  tell  me." 

"Well,  I  know  a  boy  called  Drake  who  knows  you." 

"That  beast!"  cried  Michael. 

"I  think  he's  quite  a  nice  boy.  He  lives  next  door  to  us 
and " 

Michael  kicked  angrily  the  dead  leaves  lying  about  his 
feet,  and  almost  choked  with   astonished   fury. 

"Why,  my   dear  girl,   he's   absolutely   barred.      He's   as 


LILY 441^ 

unpopular  as  anybody  I  know.  I  hope  you  won't  discuss 
me  with  that  hulking  brute.  What  the  deuce  right  has  he 
got  to  tell  you  anything  about  me?" 

"Because  I  asked  him,  and  you  needn't  look  so  enraged, 
because  if  you  want  to  know  why  you're  coming  to  tea,  it's 
because  I  asked  Arthur " 

"Who's  Arthur?"  growled  Michael. 

"Arthur  Drake." 

"Go  on,"  said  Michael  icily. 

"I  shan't  go  on,  if  you  look  like  that." 

"I  can't  help  how  I  look.  I  don't  carry  a  glass  round 
with  me,"  said  Michael.  "So  I  suppose  this  worm  Drake 
had  the  cheek  to  tell  your  mother  I  was  all  right.  Drake! 
Wait  till  I  see  the  brute  on  Monday  morning." 

"Well,  if  you  take  my  advice,"  said  Lily,  "you'll  be  nice 
to  him,  because  he's  supposed  to  have  introduced  us." 

"What  lies!     What  lies!"  Michael  stamped. 

"You  told  me  a  lie  about  your  age,"  Lily  retorted.  "And 
I've  told  mother  a  lie  on  your  account,  so  you  needn't  be 
so  particular.  And  if  you  think  you're  going  to  make  me 
cry  you're  not." 

She  sat  down  on  a  seat  and  looked  out  at  the  bare  wood- 
land with  sullen  eyes. 

"Has  Drake  ever  dared  to  make  love  to  you?"  demanded 
Michael. 

"That's  my  business,"  said  Lily.  "You've  no  right  to 
ask  me  questions  like  that." 

Michael  looked  at  her,  so  adorable  even  now,  and,  sud- 
denly throwing  his  dignity  to  the  dead  leaves,  he  sat  close 
beside  her  caressingly. 

"Darling  Lily,"  he  whispered,  "it  was  my  fault.  I  lied 
first.  I  don't  care  how  much  you  talked  about  me.  I  don't 
care  about  anything  but  you.  I'll  even  say  Drake  is  a 
decent  chap — though  he  really  isn't  even  moderately  decent. 


442  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

Lily,  we  had  such  a  rotten  Wednesday,  and  to-day  ought 
to  be  perfect.     Will  you  forgive  me?     Will  you?" 

And  the  quarrel  was  over. 

''But  you  don't  care  anything  about  Drake?"  Michael 
asked,  when  half  an  hour  had  dreamed  itself  away. 

"Of  course  not,"  she  reassured  him.  "Arthur  likes 
Doris  better  than  me." 

"But  he  mustn't  like  Doris,"  said  Michael  eagerly.  "At 
least  she  mustn't  like  him.  Because  I've  got  a  friend — at 
least  three  million  times  as  decent  as  Drake,  who  wants  to 
be  in  love  with  Doris,  or  rather  he  will  want  to  be  when 
he  sees  her." 

"Why,  you  haven't  seen  Doris  yourself  yet,"  laughed 
Lily. 

"Oh,  of  course  my  plan  may  all  come  to  nothing," 
Michael  admitted.  "But,  look  here,  I  vote  we  don't  bother 
about  anybody  else  in  the  world  but  ourselves  for  the  rest 
of  the  afternoon." 

Nor  did  they. 

"Shall  I  wear  a  top-hat  to-morrow?"  Michael  asked 
even  in  the  very  poignancy  of  farewell.  "I  mean — will 
your  mother  prefer  it?" 

"Oh,  no,  the  people  who  come  to  tea  with  us  on  Sunday 
are  mostly  artists  and  actors,"  decided  Lily  judicially. 

"Do  lots  of  people  come  then?"  asked  Michael,  quickly 
jealous. 

"A  good  many." 

"I  might  as  well  have  fallen  in  love  with  one  of  the 
Royal   Family,"  sighed   Michael   in   despair. 

"What  do  you  mean?" 

"Well,  I  never  can  see  you  alone,"  he  declared. 

"Wh)'^,  we've  had  the  whole  of  this  afternoon,"  she  told 
him. 

"Do  you  call  sitting  in  the  middle  of  Kensington  Gardens 


LILY 443_ 

being  alone?  Why,  it  was  crammed  with  people,"  he 
ejaculated  in  disgust. 

"I  must  go,  I  must  go,  I  must  go,"  Lily  whispered,  and 
almost  seemed  to  be  preening  her  wings  in  the  lamplight 
before  she  flew  away. 

"I  say,  what  number  is  Drake's  house?"  Michael  asked, 
with  a  consummate  affectation  of  casual  inquiry. 

She  told  him  laughingly,  and,  in  a  most  malicious  hurry, 
would  not  even  linger  a  moment  to  ask  him  why  he  wanted 
to  know.  Coldly  and  deliberately  Michael,  after  dinner, 
rang  the  bell  of  Drake's  house. 

"Is — er — Master  Arthur  at  home?"  he  asked  the  maid. 

"Master  Arthur,"  she  cried.     "Someone  to  see  you." 

"Hullo,  Bangs,"  shouted  Drake,  emerging  effusively 
from  a  doorway. 

"Oh,  hullo,"  said  Michael  loftily.  *'I  thought  I'd  call 
to  see  if  you  felt  like  coming  out." 

"Right-o,"  said  Drake.  "Wait  half  a  tick  while  I  tell 
my  mater.     Come  in,  and  meet  my  people." 

"Oh,  no,"  said  Michael.     "I'm  beastly  untidy." 

He  would  condescend  to  Drake  for  the  sake  of  his  love, 
but  he  did  not  think  that  love  demanded  the  sacrifice  of 
condescending  to  a  possibly  more  expansive  acquaintance 
with  Drake's  family. 

"So  you've  met  the  fair  Lily,"  Drake  said,  as  they 
strolled  along.     "Pretty  smart,  what,  my  boy?" 

"I'm  going  to  tea  with  them  to-morrow,"  Michael  in- 
formed him. 

"Mrs.  Haden's  a  bit  thick,"  said  Drake  confidentially. 
"And  Doris  is  of  a  very  coming-on  disposition." 

Michael  thought  of  Alan  and  sighed ;  then  he  thought  of 
himself  listening  to  this  and  he  was  humiliated. 

"But  Lily  is  a  bit  stand-offish,"  said  Drake.  "Of  course 
I  never  could  stand  very  fair  girls  myself.  I  say,  talking  of 
girls,  there's  a  girl  in  Sherringham  Road,  well — she's  an 


444  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

actress's  French  maid,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  but,  my  gad,  if 
you  like  cayenne,  you  ought  to  come  along  with  me,  and 
I'll  introduce  you.     She'll  be  alone  now.     Are  you  on?" 

"Oh,  thanks  very  much,"  said  Michael.  *'But  I  must 
get  back.     Good-night,  Drake." 

"Well,  you're  a  nice  chap  to  ask  a  fellow  to  come  out. 
Come  on,  don't  be  an  ass.     Her  name's  Marie." 

"I  don't  care  if  her  name's  Marie  or  Mabel  or  what  it 
is,"  Michael  declared  in  exasperation.  "I'm  sorry.  I've 
got  to  go  home.     Thanks  for  coming  out." 

He  turned  abruptly  and  walked  off,  leaving  Drake  to 
apostrophize  his  eccentricity  and  seek  consolation  with 
Marie. 

On  Sunday  afternoon  Michael,  torn  between  a  desire  to 
arrive  before  the  crowd  of  artists  and  actors  who  thronged 
the  house,  and  an  unwillingness  to  obtrude  upon  the  Sab- 
bath lethargy  of  half-past  three  o'clock,  set  out  with  beat- 
ing heart  to  invade  Lily's  home.  Love  made  him  reckless 
and  luck  rewarded  him,  for  w^hen  he  inquired  for  Mrs. 
Haden  the  maid  told  him  that  only  Miss  Lily  was  in. 

"Who  shall  I  say?"  she  asked. 

"Mr.  Fane." 

"Step  this  way,  please.  Miss  Lily's  down  in  the  morning- 
room." 

And  this  so  brief  and  so  bald  a  colloquy  danced  in  letters 
of  fire  across  the  darkling  descent  of  the  enclosed  stairs 
down  to  the  ground  floor. 

"Someone  to  see  you,  Miss  Lily." 

Not  Iris  could  have  delivered  a  richer  message. 

Deep  in  a  wicker  chair  by  a  dull  red  fire  sat  Lily  with 
open  book  upon  her  delicate  dress  of  lavender.  The  door 
closed;  the  daylight  of  the  gray  October  afternoon  seemed 
already  to  have  fled  this  room.  Dusky  in  a  corner  stood  a 
great  doll's  house,  somewhat  sad  like  a  real  house  that  has 
been  left  long  untenanted. 


LILY _445 

"Well,  now  we're  alone  enough,"  murmured  Lily. 

He  knelt  beside  her  chair  and  let  his  head  fall  upon  her 
silken  shoulder. 

"I'm  glad  you're  in  your  own  room,"  Michael  sighed  in 
answer. 

Outside,  a  muffin-man  went  ringing  through  the  somber 
Sabbath  chill;  and  sometimes,  disturbing  the  monotonous 
railings  above  the  area,  absurd  legs  were  seen  hurrying  to 
their  social  tasks.  No  other  sign  was  given  of  a  life  that 
went  on  unaware  of  these  two  on  whom  time  showered 
twenty  golden  minutes. 

"Mother  and  Doris  w^ill  be  back  at  four,"  Lily  said.  "Is 
my  face  flushed?" 

Fresh  carnations  would  have  seemed  faded  near  her, 
when  she  looked  at  Michael  for  an  answer. 

"Only  very  slightly,"  he  reassured  her. 

"Come  up   to  the  drawing-room,"  she  commanded. 

"Can  I  look  at  your  dolls'  house?"  Michael  asked. 

"That  old  thing,"   said  Lily  scornfully. 

Reverently  he  pulled  aside  the  front  of  the  battered 
dwelling-place,  and  saw  the  minute  furniture  higgledy- 
piggledy. 

"I  wonder  if  anyone  has  ever  thought  of  burning  an  old 
dolls'  house,"  said  Michael  thoughtfully.  "It  would  be 
rather  a  rag.  I've  got  an  old  toy  fire-engine  somewhere  at 
home." 

"You  baby,"  said  Lily. 

"Well,  it  depresses  me  to  see  that  dolls'  house  all  disused 
and  upside  down  and  no  good  any  more.  My  kiddy  sister 
gave  hers  to  a  hospital.  What  a  pity  I  never  thought  of 
burning  that,"  sighed  Michael  regretfully.  "I  say,  some 
time  we  must  explore  this  room.  It  reminds  me  of  all  sorts 
of  things." 

"What  sort  of  things?"  asked  Lily  indifferently. 

"Oh,  being  a  kid." 


446  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

"Well,  I  don't  want  to  be  reminded  of  that,"  said  Lily. 
"I  wish  I  was  older  than  I  am." 

"Oh,  so  do  I,"  said  Michael.  "I  don't  want  to  be  a  kid 
again." 

Upstairs  in  the  drawing-room  it  was  still  fairly  light,  but 
the  backs  of  the  gray  houses  opposite  and  the  groups  of 
ghostly  trees  that  filmed  the  leaden  air  seemed  to  call  for 
curtains  to  be  drawn  across  the  contemplation  of  their 
melancholy.  Yet  before  they  sat  down  by  the  crackling 
fire  Michael  and  Lily  stood  with  their  cheeks  against  the 
cold  w^indow-panes  in  a  luxury  of  bodeful  silence. 

"No,  you're  not  to  sit  so  close  now,"  Lily  ordained,  when 
by  a  joint  impulse  they  turned  to  inhabit  the  room  in  which 
they  had  been  standing.  Michael  saw  a  large  photograph 
album  and  seized  it. 

"No,  you're  not  to  look  in  that,"  Lily  cried. 

"Why  not?"  he  asked,  holding  it  high  above  his  head. 

"Because  I  don't  want  you  to,"  said  Lily.  "Put  it 
down." 

"I  want  to  see  if  there  are  any  photographs  of  you  when 
you  were  a  kid." 

"Well,  I  don't  want  you  to  see  them,"  Lily  persisted. 

In  the  middle  of  a  struggle  for  possession  of  the  album 
Mrs.  Haden  and  Doris  came  in,  and  Michael  felt  rather 
foolish. 

"What  a  dreadfully  noisy  girl  you  are,  Lily,"  said  Mrs. 
Haden.  "And  is  this  your  friend  Mr.  Fane?  How  d'ye 
do?" 

"I'm  afraid  it  was  my  fault,"  said  Michael.  "I  was 
trying  to  bag  the  photograph  album." 

"Oh,  Lily  hates  anyone  to  see  that  picture  of  her,"  Doris 
interposed.     "She's  so  conceited,  and  just  because " 

"Shut  up,  you  beast,"  cried  Lily. 

"Her  legs " 


-      • LILY 447 

"Doris!"  interposed  Mrs.  Haden.  "You  must  remember 
you're  grown  up  now." 

"Mother,  can't  I  burn  the  photograph?"  said  Lily. 

"No,  she's  not  to,  mother,"  Doris  interrupted.  "She's 
not  to,  is  she?  You  jealous  thing.  You'd  love  to  burn  it 
because  it's  good  of  me." 

"Well,  really,"  said  Mrs.  Haden,  "what  Mr.  Fane  can 
be  thinking  of  you  two  girls,  I  shouldn't  like  to  guess." 

The  quarrel  over  the  album  died  down  as  easily  as  it  had 
begun,  and  the  entrance  of  the  tea  adjusted  the  conversation 
to  a  less  excited  plane. 

Mrs.  Haden  was  a  woman  whom  Michael  could  not  help 
liking,  for  her  open,  breezy  manner  and  a  certain  large- 
handed  toleration  which  suited  her  loud,  deep  voice.  But 
he  was  inclined  to  deprecate  her  obviously  dyed  hair  and 
the  plentifulness  of  pink  powder;  nor  could  he  at  first 
detect  in  her  any  likeness  to  Lily  who,  though  Mrs.  Haden 
persistently  reproached  her  as  a  noisy  girl,  stood  for  Michael 
as  the  slim  embodiment  of  a  subtle  and  easy  tranquillity. 
Gradually,  however,  during  the  afternoon  he  perceived 
slight  resemblances  between  the  mother  and  daughter  that 
showed  them  vaguely  alike,  as  much  alike,  at  any  rate,  as  an 
elk  and  a  roedeer. 

Doris  Haden  was  much  less  fair  than  Lily,  though  she 
could  only  have  been  called  dark  in  comparison  with  her 
sister.  She  had  a  high  complexion,  wide,  almond-shaped 
eyes  of  a  very  mutable  hazel,  and  a  ripe,  sanguine  mouth. 
She  was  dressed  in  a  coat  and  skirt  of  crushed  strawberry 
frieze,  whose  cool  folds  seemed  to  enhance  her  slightly  exotic 
air.  Michael  could  not  help  doubting  whether  she  and 
Alan  were  perfectly  suited  to  one  another.  He  could  not 
imagine  that  she  would  not  care  for  him,  but  he  wondered 
about  Alan's  feelings;  and  Drake's  overnight  description 
stuck  unpleasantly  in  his  mind  with  a  sensation  of  disloyalty 
to  Lily,  whose  sister  after  all  Doris  was. 


448  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

They  were  not  left  very  long  without  visitors,  for  one  by 
one  young  men  came  in  with  a  self-possession  and  an  as- 
sumption of  familiarity  that  Michael  resented  very  much, 
and  all  the  more  deeply  because  he  felt  himself  at  a  dis- 
advantage. He  wondered  if  Lily  were  despising  him,  and 
wished  that  she  would  not  catch  hold  of  these  detestable 
young  men  by  the  lapels  of  their  coats,  or  submit  to  their 
throaty  persiflage.  Once  when  the  most  absolutely  self- 
possessed  of  all,  a  tall,  thin  creature  with  black  fuzzy  hair 
and  stilted  joints,  pulled  Lily  on  to  his  knee  to  talk  to  him, 
Michael  nearly  dived  through  the  window  in  a  fury  of 
resentment. 

All  these  young  men  seemed  to  him  to  revel  in  their  bad 
taste,  and  their  conversation,  half  theatrical,  half  artistic, 
was  of  a  character  that  he  could  not  enter  into.  Mrs. 
Haden's  loud  laugh  rang  out  over  the  clatter  of  teacups; 
Doris  walked  about  the  room  smoking  a  cigarette  and  hum- 
ming songs;  Lily  moved  from  group  to  group  w^ith  a  non- 
chalance that  seriously  perturbed  Michael,  who  retired  more 
and  more  deeply  behind  a  spreading  palm  in  the  darkest 
corner  of  the  room.  Yet  he  could  not  tear  himself  away 
from  the  fascination  of  watching  Lily's  grace;  he  could  not 
surrender  her  to  these  marionettes  of  vulgar  fashion;  he 
could  not  go  coldly  out  into  the  Sabbath  night  without  the 
consolation  of  first  hustling  these  intruders  before  him. 

The  afternoon  drew  on  to  real  dusk;  the  gas  was 
lighted;  songs  were  sung  and  music  was  played.  All  these 
young  men  seemed  accomplished  performers  of  insignificant 
arts.  Mrs.  Haden  recited,  and  in  this  drawing-room  her 
heightened  air  and  accentuated  voice  made  Michael  blush. 
Doris  went  upstairs  for  a  moment  and  presently  came  down 
in  a  Spanish  dancing  dress,  in  which  she  swayed  about  and 
rattled  castanets  and  banged  a  tambourine,  while  the  young 
men  sat  round  and  applauded  through  the  smoke  of  their 
cigarettes.      These    cigarettes    began    to    affect    Michael's 


LILY 449 

nerves.  Wherever  he  looked  he  could  see  their  flattened 
corpses  occupying  nooks.  They  w^ere  in  the  flow^er-pots ; 
they  littered  the  grate;  they  were  strewn  on  brass  ash- 
trays; and  even  here  and  there  on  uninflammable  and  level 
spots  they  stood  up  like  little  rakish  mummies  slowly  and 
acridly  cremating  themselves.  Michael  wondered  uneasily 
what  Lily  was  going  to  do  to  entertain  these  voracious 
listeners.  He  hoped  she  would  not  debase  her  beauty  by 
dancing  on  the  hearthrug  like  her  sister.  In  the  end,  Lily 
was  persuaded  to  sing,  and  her  voice,  very  low  and  sweet, 
singing  some  bygone  coon  song,  was  tremendously  ap- 
plauded. 

Supper  time  drew  on,  and  at  last  the  parlor-maid  came 
in  and  inquired  with  a  martyred  air  how  many  she  should 
lay  for. 

"You  must  all  stay  to  supper,"  cried  Mrs.  Haden  in 
deafening  hospitality.  "Everybody.  Mr.  Fane,  you'll  stay, 
won't  you?" 

"Oh,  thanks  very  much,"  said  Michael  shyly,  and  wished 
that  these  confounded  young  men  would  not  all  look  at  him 
as  if  they  had  perceived  him  suddenly  for  the  first  time.. 
Everybody  seemed,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  help  to  get 
supper  ready,  and  Michael  found  himself  being  bumped 
about  and  handed  plates  and  knives  and  glasses,  and  salad 
bowls.  Even  at  supper  he  found  himself  as  far  as  it  was 
possible  to  be  from  Lily,  and  he  thought  that  never  in  his 
life  had  food  tasted  so  absolutely  of  nothing.  But  the 
evening  came  to  an  end,  and  Michael  was  consoled  for  his 
purgatory  by  Mrs.  Haden's  invitation  to  call  whenever  he 
liked.  In  the  hall,  too,  Lily  came  out  to  see  him  off,  and 
he  besought  her  anxiously  to  assure  him  truthfully  that  to 
all  these  young  men  she  was  indifferent. 

"Of  course,  I  don't  care  for  any  of  them.  Why,  you 
silly,  they  all  think  I'm  still  a  little  girl." 

Then  since  a  friendly  draught  had  closed  the  drawing- 


450  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

room  door,  she  kissed  him;  and  he  forgot  all  that  had 
happened  before,  and  sailed  home  on  thoughts  that  carried 
him  high  above  the  iron-bound  sadness  of  the  Sunday  night. 
Some  time  early  in  the  week  came  a  letter  from  Stella  in 
answer  to  his,  and  when  Michael  read  it  he  wished  that 
Stella  would  come  home,  since  only  she  seemed  to  appre- 
ciate what  love  meant.  Yet  Stella  was  even  younger  than 
Lily. 


Darling  Michael; 


Stuttgart^ 

Sunday. 


I'm  writing  a  sonata  about  Lily.  It's  not  very  good, 
unfortunately,  so  you'll  never  be  able  to  hear  it.  But  after 
all,  as  you  don't  understand  music,  perhaps  I  will  let  you 
hear  it.  I  wish  you  had  told  me  more  about  Lily.  I  think 
she's  lucky.  You  must  be  simply  a  perfect  person  to  be  in 
love  with.  Most  boys  are  so  silly.  That's  why  only  men 
of  at  least  thirty  attract  me.  But  of  course  if  I  could  find 
someone  younger  who  would  be  content  to  love  me  and  not 
mind  whether  I  loved  him,  I  should  prefer  that.  You  say 
I  don't  know  what  love  is.  How  silly  you  are,  Michael. 
Now  isnt  it  thrilling  to  take  Lily's  hand?  I  do  know 
what  love  is.  But  don't  look  shocked,  because  if  you  can 
still  look  shocked,  you  don't  know  what  love  is.  Don't 
forget  I'm  seventeen  next  month,  and  don't  forget  I'm  a 
girl  as  well  as  Lily.  Lily  is  a  good  name  for  her,  if  she 
is  very  fair.  I  expect  she  really  has  cendre  hair.  I  hope 
she's  rather  tall  and  delicate-looking.  I  hope  she's  a  violin 
sort  of  girl,  or  like  those -notes  half-way  up  the  treble.  It 
must  have  been  perfect  when  you  met  her.  I  can  just 
imagine  you,  especially  if  you  like  October  as  much  as  I 
do.  Did  the  leaves  come  falling  down  all  round  you  when 
you  kissed  her?  Oh,  Michael,  it  must  have  been  enchant- 
ing. I  want  to  come  back  soon,  soon,  soon,  and  see  this 
Lily  of  yours.     Will  she  like  me?     Is  she  fond  of  music? 

I  must  have  my  first  concert  next  summer.  Mother 
must  not  put  me  off.  Why  doesn't  she  let  me  come  home 
now'^    There's  some  reason  for  it,  I  believe.    Thank  good- 


LILY  451 

ness,  you'll  have  left  school  soon.     You  must  be  sick  of  it, 
especially  since  you've  fallen  in  love. 

I  think  of  you  meeting  Lily  when  I  play  Schumann,  and 
when  I  play  Chopin  I  think  of  you  walking  about  under- 
neath her  window,  and  when  I  play  Beethoven  I  think  of 
you  kissing  her. 

Darling  Michael,  I  love  you  more  than  ever.  Be  inter- 
ested in  me  still,  because  I'm  not  interested  in  anybody 
but  you  except  of  course  myself  and  my  music. 

Oh,  do  bring  Lily  to  my  first  concert,  and  I'll  see  you 
two  alone  of  all  the  people  in  the  Hall,  and  play  you  so 
close  together  that  you'll  nearly  faint.  Now  you  think 
I'm  gushing,  I  suppose,  so  I'll  shut  up. 

With  a  most  tremendous  amount  of  love. 

Your  delightful  sister, 

Stella. 

''I  wonder  if  she  ought  to  write  like  that,"  said  Michael 
to  himself.     "Oh,  well,  I  don't  see  why  she  shouldn't." 

Certainly  as  one  grew  older  a  sister  became  a  most  val- 
uable property. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
EIGHTEEN   YEARS    OLD 

TO  Michael  it  seemed  almost  incredible  that  school 
should  be  able  to  continue  as  the  great  background 
against  which  his  love  stood  out  like  a  delicate 
scene  carved  by  the  artist's  caprice  in  an  obscure  corner 
of  a  strenuous  and  heroic  decoration.  Michael  was  hardly 
less  conscious  of  school  on  Lily's  account,  and  in  class  he 
dreamed  neither  more  nor  less  than  formerly;  but  his 
dreams  partook  more  of  ecstasy  than  those  nebulous  pic- 
tures inspired  by  the  ambitions  and  ideals  and  books  of 
youth's  progress.  Nevertheless  in  the  most  ultimate  refine- 
ment of  meditation  school  weighed  down  his  spirit.  It  is 
true  that  games  had  finally  departed  from  the  realm  of  his 
consideration,  but  equally  with  games  much  extravagance 
of  intellect  and  many  morbid  pleasures  had  gone  out  of 
cultivation.  Balancing  loss  with  gain,  he  found  himself  at 
the  close  of  his  last  autumn  term  with  a  surer  foothold  on 
the  rock-hewn  foundations  of  truth. 

Michael  called  truth  whatever  of  emotion  or  action  or 
reaction  or  reason  or  contemplation  survived  the  destruction 
he  was  dealing  out  to  the  litter  of  idols  that  were  beginning 
to  encumber  his  passage,  many  of  which  he  thought  he  had 
already  destroyed  when  he  had  merely  covered  them  with 
a  new  coat  of  gilt.  During  this  period  he  began  to  enjoy 
Wordsworth,  to  whom  he  came  by  way  of  Matthew 
Arnold,  like  a  wayfarer  who  crosses  green  fields  and  finds 

452 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS   OLD  453 


that  mountains  are  faint  upon  the  horizon.  A  successful 
lover,  as  he  called  himself,  he  began  to  despise  anything  in 
his  reading  of  poetry  that  could  not  measure  its  power  with 
the  great  commonplaces  of  human  thought. 

The  Christmas  holidays  came  as  a  relief  from  the  burden 
of  spending  so  much  of  his  time  in  an  atmosphere  from 
which  he  was  sure  he  had  drained  the  last  draught  of 
health-giving  breath.  Michael  no  longer  regarded,  save  in 
a  contemptuous  aside,  the  microcosm  of  school ;  the  pleasures 
of  seniority  had  staled;  the  whole  business  was  now  a 
tedious  sort  of  mental  quarantine.  If  he  had  not  had  Lily 
to  occupy  his  leisure,  he  would  have  expired  of  restless 
inanition;  and  he  wondered  that  the  world  went  on  allow- 
ing youth's  load  of  education  to  be  encumbered  by  a  dead- 
weight of  superfluous  information.  Alan,  for  instance,  had 
managed  to  obtain  a  scholarship  some  time  in  late  Decem- 
ber, and  would  henceforth  devote  himself  to  meditating  on 
cricket  for  one  term  and  playing  it  hard  for  another  term. 
It  would  be  nine  months  before  he  went  to  Oxford,  and 
for  nine  months  he  would  live  in  a  state  of  mental  catalepsy 
fed  despairingly  by  the  masters  of  the  Upper  Sixth  with  the 
few  poor  last  facts  they  could  scrape  together  from  their 
own  time-impoverished  store.  Michael,  in  view  of  Alan's 
necessity  for  gaining  this  scholarship,  had  never  tried  to 
lure  him  toward  Doris  and  a  share  in  his  own  fortune. 
But  he  resolved  that  during  the  following  term  he  would 
do  his  best  to  galvanize  Alan  out  of  the  catalepsy  that  he 
woefully  foresaw  was  imminent. 

Meanwhile  the  Christmas  holidays  were  here,  and 
Michael,  on  their  first  night,  vowed  all  their  leisure  to  Lily. 

There  was  time  now  for  expeditions  farther  afield  than 
Kensington  Gardens,  which  in  winter  seemed  to  have  lost 
some  of  their  pastoral  air.  The  naked  trees  no  longer 
veiled  the  houses,  and  the  city  with  its  dingy  railings  and 
dingy  people  and  mud-splashed  omnibuses  was  always  an 


454  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

intrusion.  Moreover,  fellow-Jacobeans  used  to  haunt  their 
privacy;  and  often  when  it  was  fogg>^  in  London,  out  in 
the  country  there  was  winter  sunlight. 

These  were  days  whose  clarity  and  silence  seemed  to  call 
for  love's  fearless  analysis,  and  under  a  sky  of  turquoise  so 
faintly  blue  that  scarcely  even  at  the  zenith  could  it  survive 
the  silver  dazzle  of  the  low  January  sun,  Michael  and  Lily 
would  swing  from  Barnet  into  Finchley  with  Michael 
talking  all  the  way. 

''Why  do  you  love  me?"  he  would  flash. 

"Because  I  do." 

*'Oh,  can't  you  think  of  any  better  reason  than  that?" 

"Because — because — oh,  Michael,  I  don't  want  to  think 
of  reasons,"  Lily  would  declare. 

"You  are  determined  to  marry  me?"  Michael  would 
flash  again. 

"Yes,  some  day." 

"You  don't  think  you'll  fall  in  love  with  anybody  else?" 

"I  don't  suppose  so." 

"Only  suppose?"  Michael  would  echo  on  a  fierce  pause. 

"Well,   no,   I  won't." 

"You  promise?" 

"Yes,  yes,  I  promise,"  Lily  would  pout. 

Then  the  rhythm  of  their  walk  would  be  renewed,  and 
arm  in  arm  they  would  travel  on,  until  the  next  foolish 
perplexity  demanded  solution.  Twilight  would  often  find 
them  still  on  the  road,  and  when  some  lofty  avenue  en- 
gulfed their  path,  the  uneasy  warmth  of  the  overarching 
trees  would  draw  them  very  close,  while  hushed  endear- 
ments took  them  slowly  into  lamp-shine. 

When  the  dripping  January  rains  came  down,  Michael 
spent  many  afternoons  in  the  morning-room  of  Lily's  house. 
Here,  subject  only  to  Doris's  exaggerated  hesitation  to 
enter,  Michael  would  build  up  for  himself  and  Lily  the 
indissoluble  ties  of  a  childhood  that,  though  actually  it  was 


EIGHTEEN    YEARS    OLD  455 


spent  in  ignorance  of  each  other's  existence,  possessed  many 
links  of  sentimental  communion. 

For  instance,  on  the  wall  hung  Cherry  Ripe — the  same 
girl  in  white  frock  and  pink  sash  who  nearly  fourteen  years 
ago  had  conjured  for  Michael  the  first  hazy  intimations  of 
romance.  Here  she  hung,  staring  down  at  them  as  demurely 
if  not  quite  so  beautiful  as  of  old.  Lily  observed  that  the 
picture  was  not  unlike  Doris  at  the  same  age,  and  Michael 
felt  at  once  that  such  a  resemblance  gave  it  a  permanent 
value.  Certainly  his  etchings  of  Montmartre  and  views  of 
the  Sussex  Downs  would  never  be  hallowed  by  the  associa- 
tions that  made  sacred  this  oleograph  of  a  Christmas 
Annual. 

There  were  the  picture  books  of  Randolph  Caldecott 
tattered  identically  with  his  own,  and  Michael  pointed  out 
to  Lily  that  often  they  must  have  sat  by  the  fire  reading 
the  same  verse  at  the  same  moment.  Was  not  this  thought 
almost  as  fine  as  the  actual  knowledge  of  each  other's  daily 
life  would  have  been?  There  were  other  books  whose 
pages,  scrawled  and  dog-eared,  were  softened  by  innumer- 
able porings  to  the  texture  of  Japanese  fairy  books.  In  a 
condition  practically  indistinguishable  all  of  these  could  be 
found  both  in  Carlington  Road  and  Trelawny  Road. 

There  were  the  mutilated  games  that  commemorated 
Christmas  after  Christmas  of  the  past.  Here  was  the  pack 
of  Happy  Families,  with  Mrs.  Chip  now  a  widow,  Mr. 
Block  the  Barber  a  widower,  and  the  two  young  Grits 
grotesque  orphans  of  the  grocery.  There  were  Ludo  and 
Lotto  and  Tiddledy-winks,  whose  counters,  though  terribly 
depleted,  were  still  eloquent  with  the  undetermined  squab- 
bles and  favorite  colors  of  childhood. 

Michael  was  glad  that  Lily  should  spring  like  a  lovely 
ghost  from  the  dust  of  familiar  and  forgotten  relics.  It 
had  been  romantic  to  snatch  her  on  a  dying  cadence  of 
Verlaine  out  of  the  opalescent  vistas  of  October  trees;    but 


456  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

his  perdurable  love  for  her  rested  on  these  immemorial 
affections  whose  history  they  shared. 

Lily  herself  was  not  so  sensitive  to  this  aroma  of  the 
past  as  Michael.  She  was  indeed  apt  to  consider  his  enthu- 
siasm a  little  foolish,  and  would  wonder  why  he  dragged 
from  the  depths  of  untidy  cupboards  so  much  rubbish  that 
only  owed  its  preservation  to  the  general  carelessness  of  the 
household.  Lily  cared  very  little  either  for  the  past  or  the 
future  and,  though  she  was  inclined  to  envy  Doris  her 
dancing  lessons  and  likelihood  of  appearing  some  time  next 
year  on  the  stage,  she  did  not  seem  really  to  desire  any 
activity  of  career  for  herself.  This  was  a  relief  to  Michael, 
who  frankly  feared  what  the  stage  might  wreak  upon  their 
love. 

''But  I  wish  you'd  read  a  little  more,"  he  protested. 
"You  like  such  rotten  books." 

"I  feel  lazy  when  I'm  not  with  you,"  she  explained. 
"And,  anyway,  I  hate  reading." 

"Do  you  think  of  me  all  the  time  I'm  away  from  you?" 
Michael  asked. 

Lily  told  him  she  thought  of  nothing  else,  and  his  pride 
in  her  admission  led  him  to  excuse  her  laziness,  and  even 
made  him  encourage  it.  There  was,  however,  about  the 
atmosphere  of  Lily's  home  a  laxity  which  would  have  over- 
come more  forcible  exhortations  than  Michael's.  He  was 
too  much  in  love  with  Lily's  kisses  to  do  more  than  vaguely 
criticize  her  surroundings.  He  did  not  like  Mrs.  Haden's 
pink  powder,  but  nevertheless  the  pink  powder  made  him 
less  sensitive  than  he  might  have  been  to  Mrs.  Haden's 
opinion  of  his  daily  visits  and  his  long  unchaperoned  expe- 
ditions with  Lily.  The  general  laxity  tended  to  obscure 
his  own  outlook,  and  he  had  no  desire  to  state  even  to  him- 
self his  intentions.  He  felt  himself  tremendously  old  when 
he  thought  of  kisses,  but  when  he  tried  to  visualize  Lily  and 
himself   even    four   years  hence   he    felt   hopelessly   young. 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS    OLD  457 


Mrs.  Haden  evidently  regarded  him  as  a  boy  and,  since  that 
fact  seemed  to  relieve  her  of  the  slightest  anxiety,  Michael 
had  no  desire  to  impress  upon  her  his  precocity.  The  only 
bann  that  Mrs.  Haden  laid  on  his  intercourse  v^ith  Lily 
w^as  her  refusal  to  allov^^  him  to  take  her  out  alone  at  night, 
but  she  had  no  objection  to  his  escorting  Doris  and  Lily 
together  to  the  theater;  nor  did  she  oppose  Michael's  plan 
to  celebrate  the  last  night  of  the  holidays  by  inviting  Alan 
to  make  a  quartet  for  the  Drury  Lane  pantomime.  Alan 
had  only  just  come  back  from  skating  in  Switzerland  v^ith 
his  father,  and  he  could  not  refuse  to  join  Michael's  party, 
although  he  said  he  w^as  ''off  girls"  at  the  moment. 

"You  alwrays  are,"  Michael  protested. 

"And  I'm  not  going  to  fall  in  love,  even  to  please  you,'* 
Alan  added. 

"All  right,"  Michael  protested.  "Just  because  you've 
been  freezing  yourself  to  death  all  the  holidays,  you  needn't 
come  back  and  thrown  cold  water  over  me." 

They  all  dined  with  Mrs.  Haden,  and  Michael  could  not 
help  laughing  to  see  how  seriously  and  how  shyly  Alan  took 
the  harum-scarum  feast  at  which,  between  every  course,  one 
of  the  girls  would  rush  upstairs  to  fetch  down  a  fan  or  a 
handkerchief  or  a  ribbon. 

"I  think  your  friend  is  charming,"  said  Mrs.  Haden 
loudly,  when  she  and  Michael  were  alone  for  a  minute  in 
the  final  confusion  of  not  being  late.  Michael  wondered 
why  something  in  her  tone  made  him  resent  this  compli- 
ment. But  there  was  no  opportunity  to  puzzle  over  his 
momentary  distaste,  because  it  was  time  to  start  for  the 
occupation  of  the  box,  which  Mrs.  Haden  had  been  given 
by  one  of  her  friends. 

"I  vote  we  drive  home  in  two  hansoms,"  suggested 
Michael  as  they  stood  in  the  vestibule  when  the  pantomime 
was  over. 

Alan  looked  at  him  quickly  and  made  a  grimace.     But 
30 


458  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Michael  was  determined  to  enjoy  Lily's  company  during  a 
long,  uninterrupted  drive,  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  give 
Alan  the  opportunity  of  finding  out  whether  he  could  possi- 
bly attach  himself  to  Doris. 

Michael's  own  drive  enthralled  him.  The  hot  theater 
and  the  glittering  performance  had  made  Lily  exquisitely 
tired  and  languorous,  and  Michael  thought  she  had  never 
surrendered  herself  so  breathlessly  before,  that  never  before 
had  her  flowerlike  kisses  been  so  intangible  and  her  eyes  so 
drowsily  passionate.  Lulled  by  the  regularity  of  the  motion, 
Lily  lay  along  his  bended  arm  as  if  asleep  and,  as  he  held 
her,  Michael's  sense  of  responsibility  became  more  and  more 
dreamily  indistinct.  The  sensuousness  of  her  abandonment 
drugged  all  but  the  sweet  present  and  the  poignant  ecstasy 
of  possession. 

"I  adore  you,"  he  whispered.  "Lily,  are  you  asleep? 
Lily!  Lily,  you  are  asleep,  asleep  in  my  arms,  you  lovely 
girl.     Can  you  hear  me  talking  to  you?" 

She  stirred  in  his  embrace  like  a  ruflfling  bird;  she  sighed 
and  threw  a  fevered  hand  upon  his  shoulder. 

"Michael,  why  do  you  make  me  love  you  so?"  she  mur- 
mured, and  fell  again  into  her  warm  trance. 

"Are  you  speaking  to  me  from  dreams?"  he  whispered. 
"Lily,  you  almost  frighten  me.  I  don't  think  I  knew  I 
loved  you  so  much.  The  whole  world  seems  to  be  galloping 
past.     Wake  up,  wake  up.     We*re  nearly  home." 

She  stretched  herself  in  a  rebellious  shudder  against  con- 
sciousness and  looked  at  Michael  wide-eyed. 

"I  thought  you  were  going  to  faint  or  something,"  he 
said. 

Hardly  another  word  they  spoke,  but  sat  upright  staring 
before  them  at  the  oncoming  lamp-posts.  Soon  Trelawny 
Road  was  reached,  and  in  that  last  good  night  was  a  sense 
of  nearness  that  never  before  had  Michael  imagined. 

By  her  house  they  waited  for  a  minute  in  the   empty 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS   OLD  459 


street,  silent,  hand  in  hand,  until  the  other  cab  swung  round 
the  corner.  Alan  and  Michael  watched  the  two  girls  dis- 
appear through  the  flickering  door^vay,  and  then  they 
strolled   back  toward   Carlington   Road,   where  Alan   was 

spending  the  night.  r  t  -i    v» 

''Well?"  asked  Michael.    "What  do  you  think  of  Lilyr 

*'I  think  she's  very  pretty." 

"And  Doris?" 

'1  didn't  care  very  much  for  her  really,'  said  Alan 
apologetically.  "She's  pretty,  not  so  pretty  as  Lily,  of 
course;  but,  I  say,  Michael,  I  suppose  you'll  be^  offended, 
but  I'd  better  ask  right  out  .  .  .  who  are  they?" 

"The  Hadens?"  .  ,      ,xn,    » 

"Yes.  I  thought  Mrs.  Haden  rather  awful.  Whats 
Mr.  Haden?  or  isn't  there  a  Mr.  Haden?" 

"I  believe  he's  in  Burmah,"  said  Michael. 

"Burmah?" 

"Why  shouldn't  he  be?" 

"No  reason  at  all,"  Alan  admitted,  "but  .  .  .  well  .  .  ^. 
I  thought  there  was  something  funny  about  that  family. 

"You  think  everything's  funny  that's  just  a  little  bit 
different  from  the  deadly  average,"  said  Michael.  "What 
exactly  was  funny,  may  I  ask?"  ^^ 

"I  don't  think  Mrs.   Haden  is  a  lady,  for  one  thing, 
Alan  blurted  out. 

"I  do,"  said  Michael  shortly.  "And,  anyway,  if  she 
weren't,  I  don't  see  that  makes  any  difference  to  me  and 

T   ']\r  " 

"But  what  are  you  going  to  do?"^  Alan  asked.  "Do 
you  think  you're  going  to  marry  her?"  ^ 

"Some  day.  Life  isn't  a  cricket-match,  you  know,'  said 
Michael  sententiously.  "You  can't  set  your  field  just  as 
you  would  like  to  have  it  at  the  moment." 

"You  know  best  what's  good  for  you,"  Alan  sighed. 


46o  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

"Yes  ...  I  think  I  do.  I  think  it's  better  to  live  than 
to  stagnate  as  you're  doing." 

"What  does  your  mother  say?"  Alan  asked. 

"I  haven't  told  her  anything  about  Lily." 

"No,  because  you're  not  in  earnest.  And,  if  \^ou're  in 
earnest,  Lily  isn't." 

"What  the  devil  do  you  knovi^  about  her?"  Michael 
angrily  demanded. 

"I  know  enough  to  see  you're  both  behaving  like  a  couple 
of  reckless  kids,"  Alan  retorted. 

"Damn  you!"  cried  Michael  in  exasperation.  "I  wish 
you  wouldn't  try  to  interfere  with  what  doesn't  after  all 
concern  you  very  much." 

"You  insisted  on  introducing  me,"  Alan  pointed  out. 

"Because  I  thought  it  would  be  a  rag  if  we  were  both  in 
love  with  sisters.  But  you're  turning  into  a  machine.  Since 
you've  swatted  up  into  the  Upper  Sixth,  you've  turned  into 
a  very  good  imitation  of  the  prigs  you  associate  with.  Every- 
body isn't  like  you.  Some  people  develop.  ...  I  could 
have  been  just  like  you  if  I  had  cared  to  be.  I  could  have 
been  Captain  of  the  School  and  Scholar  of  Balliol  Vv-ith  my 
nose  ground  down  to  d  and  cav,  hammering  out  tenth-rate 
Latin  lyrics  and  reading  Theocritus  with  the  amusing  parts 
left  out.  But  what's  the  good  of  arguing  with  you?  You're 
perfectly  content,  and  you  think  you  can  be  as  priggish  as 
you  like,  as  long  as  you  conceal  it  by  making  fifty  runs  in 
the  Dulford  match.  I  suppose  you  consider  my  behavior 
unwholesome  at  eighteen.  Well,  I  daresay  it  is  by  your 
standards.  But  are  your  standards  worth  anything?  I 
doubt  it.  I  think  they're  fine  up  to  a  point.  I'm  perfectly 
willing  to  admit  that  we  behaved  like  a  pair  of  little  blight- 
ers with  those  girls  at  Eastbourne.  But  this  is  something 
altogether  different." 

"We  shall  see,"  said  Alan  simply.  "I'm  not  going  to 
quarrel  with  you.     So  shut  up." 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS   OLD  461 

Michael  walked  along  in  silence,  angry  with  himself  for 
having  caused  this  ill  feeling  by  his  obstinacy  in  making  an 
unsuitable  introduction,  and  angry  with  Alan  because  he 
would  accentuate  by  his  attitude  the  mistake. 

By  the  steps  of  his  house  Michael  stopped  and  looked  at 
Alan  severely. 

"This  is  the  last  time  I  shall  attempt  to  cure  you,"  he 
announced. 

"All  right,"  said  Alan  with  perfect  equanimity.  "You 
can  do  anything  you  like  but  quarrel.  You  needn't  talk  to 
me  or  look  at  me  or  think  about  me  until  you  want  to.  I 
shall  feel  a  bit  bored,  of  course,  but,  oh,  my  dear  old  chap, 
do  get  over  this  love-sickness  soon." 

"This  isn't  like  that  silly  affair  at  Bournemouth  last 
Easter,"  Michael  challenged. 

"I  know  that,  my  dear  chap.     I  wish  it  was." 

With  the  subject  of  love  finally  sealed  between  him  and 
Alan,  Michael  receded  farther  and  farther  from  the  world 
of  school.  He  condescended  indeed  to  occupy  a  distinguished 
position  by  the  hot-water  pipes  of  the  entrance-hall,  where 
his  aloofness  and  ability  to  judge  men  and  gods  made  him  a 
popular,  if  slightly  incomprehensible,  figure.  Toward  all 
the  masters  he  emanated  a  compassion  which  he  really  felt 
very  deeply.  Those  whom  he  liked  he  conversed  with  as 
equals;  those  whom  he  disliked  he  talked  to  as  inferiors. 
But  he  pitied  both  sections.  In  class  he  was  polite,  but 
somewhat  remote,  though  he  missed  very  few  opportunities 
of  implicitly  deriding  the  Liberal  views  of  Mr.  Kirkham. 
The  whole  school  with  its  ant-like  energy,  whose  ultimate 
object  and  obvious  result  were  alike  inscrutable  to  Michael, 
just  idly  amused  him,  and  he  reserved  for  Lily  all  his  zest 
in  life. 

The  Lent  term  passed  away  with  parsimonious  February 
sunlight,  with  March  lying  gray  upon  the  houses  until  it 
proclaimed  itself  suddenly  in  a  booming  London  gale.    The 


462  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Easter  holidays  arrived,  and  Mrs.  Fane  determined  to  go  to 
Germany  and  see  Stella.  Would  Michael  come?  Michael 
pleaded  many  disturbed  plans  of  cricket  practice ;  of  matric- 
ulation at  St.  Mary's  College,  Oxford;  of  working  for  the 
English  Literature  Prize;  of  anything  indeed  but  his  desire 
to  see  with  Lily  April  break  to  May.  In  the  end  he  had 
his  own  way,  and  Mrs.  Fane  went  to  the  Continent  without 
his  escort. 

Lily  was  never  eager  for  the  discussions  and  the  con- 
tingencies and  the  doubts  of  love;  in  all  their  walks  it  had 
been  Michael  who  flashed  the  questions,  she  who  let  slip 
her  answers.  The  strange  fatigue  of  spring  made  much  less 
difference  to  her  than  to  him,  and  however  insistent  he  was 
for  her  kisses  she  never  denied  him.  Michael  tried  to  feel 
that  the  acquiescence  of  the  hard,  the  reasonable,  the  intel- 
lectual side  of  him  to  April's  passionate  indulgence  merely 
showed  that  he  was  more  surely  and  more  sanely  growing 
deeper  in  love  with  Lily  every  day.  Sometimes  he  had 
slight  tremors  of  malaise,  a  sensation  of  weakening  fibers, 
and  dim  stirrings  of  responsibility;  but  too  strong  for  them 
was  his  heartsease,  too  precious  w^as  Lily's  rose-bloomed 
grace  of  submission.  The  more  sharply  imminent  her  form 
became  upon  his  thought,  the  more  surely  deathless  did  he 
suppose  his  love.  Michael's  mind  was  always  framing 
moments  in  eternity,  and  of  all  these  moments  the  sight  of 
her  lying  upon  the  vivid  grass,  the  slim,  the  pastoral,  the 
fair  immortal  girl  stood  unparagoned  by  any.  There  was 
no  landscape  that  Lily  did  not  make  more  inevitably  com- 
posed. There  was  no  place  of  which  she  did  not  become 
tutelary,  whether  she  lay  among  the  primroses  that  starred 
the  steep  brown  banks  of  woodland  or  whether  she  fronted 
the  great  sunshine  of  the  open  country;  but  most  of  all 
when  she  sat  in  cowslips,  looking  over  arched  knees  at  the 
wind. 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS   OLD  463 

Michael  fell  into  the  way  of  talking  to  her  as  if  he  were 
playing  upon  Dorian  pipes  the  tale  of  his  love: 

"I  must  buy  you  a  ring,  Lily.  What  ring  shall  I  buy 
for  you  ?  Rings  are  all  so  dull.  Perhaps  your  hands  would 
look  wrong  with  a  ring,  unless  I  could  find  a  star-sapphire 
set  in  silver.  I  thought  you  were  lovely  in  autumn,  but  I 
think  you  are  more  lovely  in  spring.  How  the  days  are 
going  by;  it  will  soon  be  May.  Lily,  if  you  had  the  choice 
of  everything  in  the  world,  what  would  you  choose?" 

"I  would  choose  to  do  nothing." 

"If  you  had  the  choice  of  all  the  people  in  the  world, 
would  you  choose  me?" 

"Yes.     Of  course." 

"Lily,  you  make  me  curiously  lazy.  I  want  never  again 
to  do  anything  but  sit  in  the  sun  with  you.  Why  can't  we 
stay  like  this  forever?" 

"I  shouldn't  mind." 

"I  wish  that  you  could  be  turned  into  a  primrose,  and 
that  I  could  be  turned  into  a  hazel-bush  looking  down  at 
you  forever.  Or  I  wish  you  could  be  a  cowslip  and  I  could 
be  a  plume  of  grass.  Lily,  why  is  it  that  the  longer  I  know 
you  the  less  you  say?" 

"You  talk  enough  for  both,"  said  Lily. 

"I  talk  less  to  you  than  to  anyone.  I  really  only  want  to 
look  at  you,  you  lovely  thing." 

But  the  Easter  holidays  were  almost  over,  and  Michael 
had  to  go  to  Oxford  for  his  matriculation.  On  their  last 
long  day  together,  Lily  and  he  went  to  Hampton  Court 
and  dreamed  the  sad  time  away.  When  twilight  was  falling 
Michael  said  he  had  a  sovereign  to  spend  on  whatever  they 
liked  best  to  do.  Why  should  they  not  have  dinner  on  a 
balcony  over  the  river,  and  after  dinner  drive  all  the  way 
home  in  a  hansom  cab? 

So  they  sat  grandly  on  the  chilly  balcony  and  had  dinner, 
until  Lily  in  her  thin  frock  was  cold. 


464  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"But  never  mind,"  said  Michael.  'Til  hold  you  close 
to  me  all  the  way  to  London." 

They  found  their  driver  and  told  him  where  to  go.  The 
man  was  very  much  pleased  to  think  he  had  a  fare  all  the 
way  to  London,  and  asked  Michael  if  he  wanted  to  drive 
fast. 

"No,  rather  slow,  if  anything,"  said  Michael. 

The  fragrant  miles  went  slowly  past,  and  all  the  way 
they  drove  between  the  white  orchards,  and  all  the  way  like 
a  spray  of  bloom  Lily  was  his.  Past  the  orchards  they  went, 
past  the  twinkling  roadside  houses,  past  the  gates  where  the 
shadows  of  lovers  fell  across  the  road,  past  the  breaking  limes 
and  lilac,  past  the  tulips  stifE  and  dark  in  the  moonlight, 
through  the  high  narrow  street  of  Brentford,  past  Kew 
Bridge  and  the  slow  trams  with  their  dim  people  nodding, 
through  Chiswick  and  into  Hammersmith  where  a  piano- 
organ  was  playing  and  the  golden  streets  were  noisy.  It 
was  Doris  who  opened  the  door. 

"Eleven  o'clock,"   she   said.      "Mother's   rather   angry." 

"You'd  better  not  come  in,"  said  Lily  to  Michael. 
"She'll  be  all  right  again  by  next  week,  when  you  come 
back." 

"Oh,  no,  I'll  come  in,"  he  insisted.  "I'd  rather  explain 
why  we're  so  late." 

"It's  no  use  arguing  with  mother  when  she's  unreason- 
able," said  Lily.  "I  shall  go  up  to  bed;  I  don't  want  to 
have  a  row." 

"That's  right,"  Doris  sneered.  "Always  take  the  shortest 
and  easiest  way.     You  are  a  coward." 

"Oh,  shut  up,"  said  Lily,  and  without  another  word 
went  upstairs. 

"You've  spoilt  her,"  said  Doris.  "Well,  are  you  going 
to  see  mother?  She  isn't  in  a  very  pleasant  mood,  I  warn 
you." 

"She's  never  been  angry  before,"  said  Michael  hopelessly. 


EIGHTEEN    YEARS    OLD  465 

"Well,  she  has  really,"  Doris  explained.  "Only  she's 
vented  it  on  me." 

"I  say,  I'm  awfully  sorry.     I  had  no  idea "  Michael 

began. 

"Oh,  don't  apologize,"  said  Doris.  "I'm  used  to  it. 
Thank  God,  I'm  going  on  the  stage  next  year;  and  then 
Lily  and  mother  will  be  able  to  squabble  to  their  heart's 
content." 

Mrs.  Haden  was  sitting  in  what  was  called  The  Cosy 
Corner;  and  she  treated  Michael's  entrance  with  exagger- 
ated politeness. 

"Won't  you  sit  down?  It's  rather  late,  but  do  sit 
down.*' 

All  the  time  she  was  speaking  the  plate-rack  above  The 
Cosy  Corner  was  catching  the  back  of  her  hair,  and 
Michael  wondered  how  long  it  would  be  before  she  noticed 
this. 

"Really,  I  think  it's  very  wrong  of  you  to  bring  my 
daughter  home  at  this  hour,"  Mrs.  Haden  clattered.  "I'm 
sure  nobody  likes  young  people  to  enjoy  themselves  more 
than  I  do.     But  eleven  o'clock!     Where  is  Lily  now?" 

"Gone  to  bed,"  said  Doris,  w^ho  seized  the  opportunity 
to  depart  also. 

"I'm  awfully  sorry,  Mrs.  Haden,"  said  Michael  awk- 
wardly. "But,  as  it  was  my  last  night,  I  suggested  driving 
back  from  Hampton  Court.  It  was  all  my  fault;  I  do 
hope  you  won't  be  angry  with  Lily." 

"But  I  am  angry  with  Lily,"  said  Mrs.  Haden.  "Very 
angry.  She's  old  enough  to  know  better,  and  you're  old 
enough  to  know  better.  How  will  people  think  I'm  bring- 
ing up  my  daughters,  if  they  return  at  midnight  with  young 
men  in  hansoms?  I  never  heard  of  such  a  thing.  You're 
presuming  on  your  age.  You've  no  business  to  compromise 
a  girl  like  this." 

"Compromise?"  stammered  Michael. 


466  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

"None  of  the  young  people  but  you  has  ever  ventured 
to  behave  like  this,"  Mrs.  Haden  w^ent  on  with  sharply 
metallic  voice.  "Not  one  of  them.  And,  goodness  knows, 
every  Sunday  the  house  is  full  of  them." 

"But  they  don't  come  to  see  Lily,"  Michael  pointed  out. 
"They  come  to  see  you." 

"Are  you  trying  to  be  rude  to  me?"  Mrs.  Haden  asked. 

"No,  no,"  Michael  assured  her.  "And,  honestly,  Mrs. 
Haden,   I   didn't  think  you   minded  me  taking   Lily  out." 

"But  what's  going  to  happen?"  Mrs.  Haden  demanded. 

"Well — I — I  suppose  I  want  to  marry  Lily." 

Michael  w^ondered  if  this  statement  sounded  as  absurd 
to  Mrs.   Haden  as  it  sounded  to  himself. 

"What  nonsense!"  she  snapped.  "What  utter  non- 
sense! A  schoolboy  talking  such  nonsense.  Marriage 
indeed!  You  know  as  w^ell  as  I  do  that  you've  never 
thought  about  such  a  step." 

"But  I  have,"  said  Michael.    "Very  often,  as  it  happens." 

"Then  you  mustn't  go  out  with  Lily  again.  Why,  it's 
worse  than  I  thought.    I'm  horrified." 

"Do  you  mean  I'm  never  to  come  here  again?"  Michael 
asked  in  despair. 

"Come  occasionally,"  said  Mrs.  Haden.  "But  only 
occasionally." 

"All  right.  Thanks,"  said  Michael,  feeling  stunned  by 
this  unexpected  rebuke.     "Good  night,  Mrs.  Haden." 

In  the  hall  he  found  Doris. 

"Well?"  she  asked. 

"Your  mother  says  I'm  only  to  come  occasionally." 

"Oh,  that  won't  last,"  said  Doris  encouragingly. 

"Yes,  but  I'm  not  sure  that  she  isn't  right,"  said  Michael. 
"Oh,  Doris,  damn.  I  wish  I  couldn't  alw^ays  see  other 
people's  point  of  view\" 

"Mother  often  has  fits  of  violent  morality,"  said  Doris. 
"And  then  we  always  catch  it.     But  really  tjiey  don't  last." 


EIGHTEEN   YEARS    OLD  467 

"Doris,  you  don't  understand.  It  isn't  your  mother's 
disapproval  I'm  worrying  over.  It's  myself.  Lily  might 
have  waited  to  say  good  night,"  Michael  murmured  miser- 
ably. 

But  straight  upon  his  complaint  he  saw  Lily  leaning  over 
from  the  landing  above  and  blowing  kisses,  and  he  felt  more 
calm. 

"Don't  worry  too  much  about  Lily,"  whispered  Doris, 
as  she  held  the  door  open  for  him. 

"Why?" 

"I  shouldn't,  that's  all,"  she  said  enigmatically,  and  closed 
the  door  very  gently. 

At  the  time  Michael  was  not  conscious  of  any  deep  im- 
pression made  by  the  visit  to  Oxford  for  his  matriculation; 
he  was  too  much  worried  by  the  puzzle  of  his  future  con- 
duct with  regard  to  Lily.  He  felt  dull  in  the  rooms  where 
he  spent  two  nights  alone;  he  felt  shy  among  the  forty  or 
fifty  boys  from  other  public  schools ;  he  was  glad  to  go  back 
to  London.  Vaguely  the  tall  gray  tower  remained  in  his 
mind,  and  vaguely  the  cool  Gothic  seemed  to  offer  a  shelter 
from  the  problems  of  behavior,  but  that  was  all. 

When  he  returned,  the  torment  of  Lily's  desired  presence 
became  more  acute.  His  mother  wrote  to  say  that  she  would 
not  be  back  for  three  days,  and  the  only  conclusion  was  the 
hint  that  most  probably  Stella  would  come  back  with  her. 

Meanwhile  this  was  Saturday,  and  school  did  not  begin 
until  Tuesday.  Time  after  time  Michael  set  out  toward 
Trelawny  Road;  time  after  time  he  checked  himself  and 
fought  his  way  home  again.  Mrs.  Haden  had  been  right; 
he  had  behaved  badly.  Lily  was  too  young  to  bear  the 
burden  of  their  passionate  love.  And  was  she  happy  with- 
out him?  Was  she  sighing  for  him?  Or  would  she  forget 
him  and  resume  an  existence  undisturbed  by  him?  But 
the  thought  of  wasted  time,  of  her  hours  again  unoccupied, 


468  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

of  her  footsteps  walking  to  places  ignorant  of  him  was  in- 
tolerable. 

Sunday  came  round,  and  Michael  thought  that  he  would 
fling  himself  into  the  stream  of  callers;  but  the  idea  of 
doing  so  became  humiliating,  and  instead  he  circled  drearily- 
round  the  neighboring  roads,  circled  in  wide  curves,  and 
sometimes  even  swooped  into  the  forbidden  diameter  of 
Trelawny  Road.  But  always,  before  he  could  bring  himself 
to  pass  her  very  door,  he  would  turn  back  into  his  circle 
and  the  melancholy  Sabbath  sunlight  of  May. 

Twilight  no  more  entranced  him,  and  the  lovers  leaning 
over  to  one  another  languorously  in  their  endearments, 
moving  with  intertwined  arms  and  measured  steps  between 
the  wine-dark  houses,  annoyed  him  with  their  fatuous  com- 
placency and  their  bland  eyes.  He  wanted  her,  his  slim 
and  silent  Lily,  who  blossomed  in  the  night-time  like  a 
flower.  Her  wrists  w^ere  cool  as  porcelain  and  the  contact 
of  her  form  swaying  to  his  progress  was  light  as  silk.  Every- 
one else  had  their  contentment,  and  he  must  endure 
wretchedly  without  the  visible  expression  of  his  beauty. 
It  was  not  yet  too  late  to  see  her;  and  Michael  circled 
nearer  to  Trelawny  Road.  This  time  he  came  to  Lily's 
house;  he  paused  within  sound  of  laughter  upon  the  easeful 
step;  and  then  again  he  turned  away  and  walked  furiously 
on  through  the  empty  Sabbath  streets. 

In  his  room,  when  it  was  now  too  late  to  think  of  calling, 
Michael  laughed  at  himself  for  being  so  sensitive  to  Mrs. 
Haden's  reproaches.  He  told  himself  that  all  she  said  was 
due  to  the  irritation  of  the  moment,  that  to-morrow  he 
must  go  again  as  if  nothing  had  happened,  that  people 
had  no  right  to  interfere  between  lovers.  But  then,  in  all 
its  florid  bulk,  St.  James'  School  rose  up,  and  Michael 
admitted  to  himself  that  to  the  world  he  was  merely  a 
foolish  schoolboy.  He,  the  dauntless  lover,  must  be  chained 
to  a  desk  for  five  hours  every  day.     A  boy  and  girl  affair! 


EIGHTEEN    YEARS    OLD  469 

Michael  ground  his  teeth  with  exasperation.  He  must 
simply  prove  by  renouncing  for  a  term  his  part  in  Lily's 
life  that  he  was  a  schoolboy  by  an  accident  of  time.  A  man 
is  as  old  as  he  feels !  He  would  see  Lily  once  more,  and  tell 
her  that  for  the  sake  of  their  ultimate  happiness  he  would 
give  her  up  for  the  term  of  his  bondage.  Other  great  and 
romantic  lovers  had  done  the  same;  they  may  not  have 
gone  to  school,  but  they  had  accepted  menial  tasks  for  the 
sake  of  their  love. 

Yet  in  the  very  middle  of  the  night,  when  the  thickest 
darkness  seemed  to  stifle  self-deception,  Michael  knew  that 
he  had  bowed  to  authority  so  easily  because  his  conscience 
had  already  told  him  what  Mrs.  Haden  so  crudely  hinted. 
When  he  was  independent  of  school  it  would  be  different. 
Michael  made  up  his  mind  that  the  utmost  magnanimity 
would  be  possible  if  he  could  see  Lily  once  to  tell  her  of  his 
resolution.  But  on  the  next  day  Lily  was  out,  and  Mrs. 
Haden  talked  to  him  instead. 

"I've  forbidden  Lily  to  go  out  with  you  alone,"  she  said. 
"And  I  would  prefer  that  you  only  came  here  when  I  am 
in  the  house." 

"I  was  going  to  suggest  that  I  shouldn't  come  at  all  until 
July — until  after  I  had  left  school,  in  fact,"  answ^ered 
Michael. 

"Perhaps  that  would  be  best.  Then  you  and  Lily  will 
be  more  sensible." 

"Good-bye,"  said  Michael  hurriedly,  for  he  felt  that  he 
must  get  out  of  this  stifling  room,  away  from  this  over- 
whelming woman  with  her  loud  voice  and  dyed  hair  and 
worldly-wise  morality.  Then  he  had  a  sudden  conception 
of  himself  as  part  of  a  scene,  perceiving  himself  in  the  role 
of  the  banished  lover  nobly  renouncing  all.  "I  won't  write 
to  her.     I  won't  make  any  attempt  to  see  her,"  he  offered. 

"You'll  understand,"  said  Mrs.  Haden,  "that  I'm  afraid 
of — that   I   think,"   she  corrected,   "it   is  quite  likely  that 


470  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Lily  is  just  as  bad  for  you  as  you  are  for  Lily.  But  of 
course  the  real  reason  I  feel  I  ought  to  interfere  is  on 
account  of  what  people  say.  If  Mr.  Haden  were  not  in 
Burmah  ...  it  would  be  different." 

Michael  pitied  himself  profoundly  for  the  rest  of  that 
day;  but  after  a  long  luxury  of  noble  grief  the  image  of 
Lily  came  to  agitate  and  disconcert  his  acquiescence,  and 
the  insurgent  fevers  of  love  goaded  his  solitude. 

Mrs.  Fane  and  Stella  returned  during  the  first  week  of 
school.  The  great  Steinway  grand  that  came  laboriously 
in  through  the  unsashed  window  of  the  third  story  gave 
Michael,  as  it  lay  like  a  boulder  over  Carlington  Road,  a 
wonderful  sense  of  Stella's  establishment  at  home.  Stella's 
music-room  was  next  to  his  bedroom,  and  when  in  her 
nightgown  she  came  to  practice  in  the  six  o'clock  sunshine 
Michael  thought  her  music  seemed  the  very  voice  of  day. 

So  joyously  did  the  rills  and  ripples  and  fountains  of  her 
harmony  rouse  him  from  sleep  that  he  refrained  from 
criticizing  her  apparel,  and  sat  contented  in  the  sunlight 
to  listen. 

Suddenly  Stella  wheeled  round  and  said: 

"Do  tell  me  about  Lily." 

"Well,    there's    been    rather    a    row,"    Michael    began. 

"You  see,   I   took  her  to  Hampton  Court   and  we  drove 

.  .  ."  Michael  stopped,  and  for  the  first  time  he  obtained 

a  cold  clear  view  of  his  behavior,  when  he  found  he  was 

hesitating  to  tell  Stella  lest  he  might  set  her  a  bad  example. 

"Go  on,"  she  urged.     "Don't  stop." 

"Well,  we  were  rather  late.  But  of  course  it  was  the 
first  time,  and  I  hope  you  won't  think  you  can  drive  back 
at  eleven  o'clock  with  somebody  because  I  did  once — only 
once." 

"Why,  was  there  any  harm  in  it?"  asked  Stella  quickly, 
and,  as  if  to  allay  Michael's  fear  by  so  direct  a  question, 


EIGHTEEN    YEARS    OLD  471 

one  hand  went  trilling  in  scale  toward  tiie  airy  unrealities 
of  the  treble. 

"No,  of  course  there  was  no  harm  in  it,"  said  Michael. 

"Then  why  shouldn't  I  drive  back  at  eleven  o'clock  if  I 
wanted  to?"  asked  Stella,  striking  elfin  discords  as  she 
spoke. 

"It's  a  question  of  what  people  think,"  said  Michael, 
falling  back  upon  Mrs.  Haden's  line  of  defence. 

"Bother  people!"  cried  Stella,  and  immediately  she  put 
them  in  their  place  somewhere  very  far  down  in  the  bass. 

"Well,  anyway,"  said  Michael,  "I  understood  what  Mrs. 
Haden  meant,  and  I've  agreed  not  to  see  Lily  until  after 
I  leave  school." 

"And  then?" 

"Well,  then,  I  shall  see  her,"  said  Michael. 

"And  drive  back  at  eleven  o'clock  in  hansoms?" 

"Not  unless  I  can  be  engaged,"  Michael  surrendered  to 
convention. 

"And  don't  you  mind?" 

"Of  course  I  mind,"  he  confessed  gloomily. 

"Why  did  you  agree,  then?"  Stella  asked. 

"I  had  to  think  about  Lily,  just  as  I  should  have  to  think 
about   you,"   he   challenged. 

"Darling  Michael,  I  love  you  dreadfully,  but  I  really 
should  not  pay  the  least  little  tiny  bit  of  attention  to  you — 
or  anybody  else,  if  that's  any  consolation,"  she  added. 
"As  it  happens,  I've  never  yet  met  anybody  with  whom  I'd 
care  to  drive  about  in  a  hansom  at  eleven  o'clock,  but,  if  I 
did,  three  o'clock  in  the  morning  would  be  the  same  as 
three  o'clock  in   the  afternoon." 

"Stella,  you  ought  not  to  talk  like  that,"  Michael  said 
earnestly.  "You  don't  realize  what  people  w^ould  suppose. 
And  really  I  don't  think  you  ought  to  practice  in  your  night- 
gown." 


472  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

"Oh,  Michael,  if  I  practiced  in  my  chemise,  I  shouldn't 
expect  you  to  mind." 

"Stella!     Really,  you  know!" 

"Listen,"  she  said,  swinging  away  from  him  back  to  the 
keyboard.     "This  is  the  Lily  Sonata." 

Michael  listened,  and  as  he  listened  he  could  not  help 
ow^ning  to  himself  that  in  her  white  nightgown,  straight- 
backed  against  the  shimmering  ebony  instrument,  little  in- 
deed would  matter  very  much  among  those  dancing  black 
and  white  notes. 

"Or   in  nothing  at  all,"  said  Stella,  stopping  suddenly. 

Then  she  ran  across  to  Michael  and,  after  kissing  him  on 
the  top  of  his  head,  waltzed  very  slowly  out  of  the  room. 

But  not  even  Stella  could  for  long  take  away  from 
Michael  the  torment  of  Lily's  withheld  presence.  As  a 
month  went  by,  the  image  of  her  gained  in  elusive  beauty, 
and  the  desire  to  see  became  a  madness.  He  tried  to  evade 
his  promise  by  haunting  the  places  she  would  be  likely  to 
frequent,  but  he  never  saw  her.  He  wondered  if  she  could 
be  in  London,  and  he  nearly  wrote  to  ask.  There  was  no 
consolation  to  be  gained  from  books;  there  was  no  senti- 
ment to  be  culled  from  the  spots  they  had  known  together. 
He  wanted  herself,  her  fragility,  her  swooning  kisses,  her- 
self, herself.  She  was  the  consummation  of  idyllic  life,  the 
life  he  longed  for,  the  passionate  life  of  beauty  expressed 
in  her.  Stella  had  her  music;  Alan  had  his  cricket;  Mrs. 
Ross  had  her  son;  and  he  must  have  Lily.  How  damnable 
were  these  silver  nights  of  June,  how  their  fragrance,  musk- 
like even  here  in  London,  fretted  him  with  the  imagination 
of  wasted  beauty.  These  summer  nights  demanded  love; 
they  enraged  him  with  their  uselessness. 

"Isn't  Chopin  wonderful?"  cried  Stella.  "Just  when 
the  window-boxes  are  dripping  and  the  earth's  warm  and 
damp  and  the  air  is  all  turning  into  velvet." 

"Oh,  very  wonderful,"  said  Michael  bitterly. 


EIGHTEEN    YEARS    OLD  473 

And  he  would  go  out  on  the  dreaming  balcony  and, 
looking  down  on  the  motionless  lamps,  he  would  hear  the 
murmur  and  rustle  of  people.  But  he  was  starving  amid 
this  rich  plentitude  of  color  and  scent;  he  was  idle  upon 
these  maddening,  these  music-haunted,  these  royal  nights 
that  mocked  his  surrender. 

And  in  the  silent  heart  of  the  night  when  the  sheets 
were  fibrous  and  the  mattress  was  jagged,  when  the  pillow 
seared  him,  and  his  eyes  were  like  sand,  what  resolutions 
he  made  to  carry  her  away  from  Kensington;  but  in  the 
morning  how  coldly  impossible  it  was  to  do  so  at  eighteen. 

One  afternoon  coming  out  of  school,  Michael  met  Drake. 

"Hullo!"  said  Drake.  "How's  the  fair  Lily?  I  haven't 
seen  you  around  lately." 

"Haven't  you?"  said  Michael.  "No,  I  haven't  been 
round  so  much  lately." 

He  spoke  as  if  he  had  suddenly  noticed  he  had  forgotten 
something. 

"I  asked  her  about  you — over  the  garden-wall;  so  don't 
get  jealous,"  Drake  said  with  his  look  of  wise  rakishness. 
"And  she  didn't  seem  particularly  keen  on  helping  out  the 
conversation.  So  I  supposed  you'd  had  a  quarrel.  Funny 
girl,  Lily,"  Drake  went  on.  "I  suppose  she's  all  right  when 
you  know  her.     Why  don't  you  come  in  to  my  place?" 

"Thanks,"  said  Michael. 

He  felt  that  fate  had  given  him  this  opportunity.  He  had 
not  sought  it.  He  might  be  able  to  speak  to  Lily,  and  if  he 
could,  he  would  ask  her  to  meet  him,  and  promises  could 
go  to  the  devil.  He  determined  that  no  more  of  summer's 
treasure  should  be  wasted. 

He  had  a  thrill  in  Drake's  dull  drawing-room  from  the 
sense  of  nearness  to  Lily,  and  from  the  looking-glass  room 
it  was  back  to  back  with  the  more  vital  drawing-room  next 
door. 

Michael  could  hardly  bear  to  look  out  of  the  window  into 
31 


474  YOUTH^S   ENCOUNTER 

the  oblong  gardens;  two  months  away  from  Lily  made 
almost  unendurable  the  thought  that  In  one  tremulous 
instant  he  might  be  imparadised  in  the  vision  of  her  reality. 

"Hullo!  She's  there,"  said  Drake  from  the  window. 
"With  another  chap." 

Michael  with  thudding  heart  and  flaming  cheeks  stood 
close  to  Drake. 

"Naughty  girl!"  said  Drake.     "She's  flirting." 

"I  don't  think  she  was,"  said  Michael,  but,  even  as  he 
spoke,  the  knowledge  that  she  was  tore  him  to  pieces. 


CHAPTER   XIX 
PARENTS 

THE  brazen  sun  lighted  savagely  the  barren  streets, 
as  Michael  left  Trelawny  Road  behind  him.  His 
hopeless  footsteps  rasped  upon  the  pavement.  His 
humiliation  was  complete.  Not  even  was  his  personality 
strong  enough  to  retain  the  love  of  a  girl  for  six  weeks. 
Yet  he  experienced  a  morbid  sympathy  with  Lily,  so  un- 
utterably beneath  the  rest  of  mankind  was  he  already  in- 
clined to  estimate  himself.  Stella  opened  wide  her  gray 
eyes  when  she  greeted  his  pale  disheartened  return. 

''Feeling  ill?"  she  asked. 

*Tm  feeling  a  worthless  brute,"  said  Michael,  plunging 
into  a  dejected  acquiescence  in  the  worst  that  could  be  said 
about  him. 

"Tell  me,"  whispered  Stella.     "Ah,  do." 

"I've  found  out  that  Lily  is  quite  ready  to  flirt  with  any- 
body.   With  anybody!" 

"What  a  beastly  girl!"  Stella  flamed. 

"Well,  you  can't  expect  her  to  remain  true  to  a  creature 
like  me,"  said  Michael,  declaring  his  self-abasement. 

"A  creature  like  you?"  cried  Stella.  "Why,  Michael, 
how  can  you  be  so  absurd?  If  you  speak  of  yourself  like 
that,  I  shall  begin  to  think  you  are  *a  creature'  as  you  call 
yourself.  Ah,  no,  but  you're  not,  Michael.  It's  this  Lily 
who  is  the  creature.     Oh,  don't  I  know  her,   the  insipid 

475 


476  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

puss!  A  silly  little  doll  that  lets  everybody  pull  her  about. 
I  hate  weak  girls.     How  I  despise  them !" 

"But  you  despise  boys,  Stella,"  Michael  reminded  her. 
"And  this  chap  she  was  flirting  with  w^as  much  older  than 
me.     Perhaps  Lily  is  like  you,  and  prefers  older  men." 

Michael  had  no  heart  left  even  to  maintain  his  stand 
against  Stella's  alarming  opinions  and  prejudices  so  frankly 
expressed. 

"Like  me,"  Stella  cried,  stamping  her  foot.  "Like  me! 
How  dare  you  compare  her  with  me?  I'm  not  a  doll. 
Do  you  think  anyone  has  ever  dared  to  kiss  me?" 

"I'm  sorry,"  said  Michael.  "But  you  talk  so  very 
daringly  that  I  shouldn't  be  surprised  by  anything  you  told 
me.  At  the  same  time  I  can't  help  sympathizing  with  Lily. 
It  must  have  been  dull  to  be  in  love  with  a  schoolboy — an 
awkward  lout  of  eighteen." 

"Michael!  I  will  not  hear  you  speak  of  yourself  like 
that.  I'm  ashamed  of  you.  How  can  you  be  so  weak?  Be 
proud.  Oh,  Michael,  do  be  proud — it's  the  only  thing  on 
earth  worth  being." 

Stella  stood  dominant  before  him.  Her  gray  eyes  flashed ; 
her  proud,  upcurving  mouth  was  slightly  curled:  her  chin 
was  like  the  chin  of  a  marble  goddess,  and  yet  with  that 
brown  hair  lapping  her  wide  shoulders,  with  those  long 
legs,  lean-flanked  and  supple,  she  was  more  like  some  heroic 
boy. 

"Yes,  you  can  be  proud  enough,"  said  Michael.  "But 
you've  got  something  to  be  proud  of.     What  have  I  got?" 

"You've  got  me,"  said  Stella  fiercely. 

"Why,  yes,  I  suppose  I  have,"  Michael  softly  agreed. 
"Let's  talk  about  your  first  appearance." 

"I  was  talking  about  it  to  mother  when  a  man  called 
Prescott  came." 

"Prescott?"  said  Michael.    "I  seem  to  have  heard  mother 


PARENTS  477 


speak  about  him.  I  wonder  when  it  was.  A  long  time 
ago,  though." 

"Well,  whoever  he  was,"  said  Stella,  "he  brought  mother 
bad  news." 

"How  do  you  know?" 

"Have  you  ever  seen  mother  cry?" 

"Yes,  once,"  said  Michael.  "It  was  when  I  was  talking 
through  my  hat  about  the  war." 

"I've  never  seen  her  cry,"  said  Stella  pensively.  "Until 
to-day." 

Michael  forgot  about  his  own  distress  in  the  thought  of 
his  mother,  and  he  sat  hushed  all  through  the  evening, 
while  Stella  played  in  the  darkness.  Mrs.  Fane  went  up 
to  her  own  room  immediately  she  came  in  that  night,  and 
the  next  morning,  which  was  Saturday,  Michael  listlessly 
took  the  paper  out  to  read  in  the  garden,  while  he  waited 
for  Stella  to  dress  herself  so  that  they  could  go  out  together 
and  avoid  the  house  over  which  seemed  to  impend  calamity. 

Opening  the  paper,  Michael  saw  an  obituary  notice  of  the 
Earl  of  Saxby.    He  scanned  the  news,  only  half  absorbing  it : 

"In  another  column  will  be  found  the  details — enteric — 
adds  another  famous  name  to  the  lamentable  toll  of  this 
war — the  late  nobleman  did  not  go  into  society  much  of 
late  years — formerly  Captain  in  the  Welsh  Guards — born 
i860 — married  Lady  Emmeline  MacDonald,  daughter  of 
the  Earl  of  Syke,  K.t. — raised  corps  of  Mounted  Infantry 
(Saxby's  Horse) — great  traveler — unfortunately  no  heir  to 
the  title  which  becomes  extinct." 

Michael  guessed  the  cause  of  his  mother's  unhappiness 
of  yesterday.     He  went  upstairs  and  told  Stella. 

"I  suppose  mother  was  in  love  with  him,"  she  said. 

"I  suppose  she  was,"  Michael  agreed.  "I  wish  I  hadn't 
refused  to  say  good-bye  to  him.  It  seems  rather  horrible 
now." 

Mrs.  Fane  had  left  word  that  she  would  not  be  home 


478  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

until  after  dinner,  and  Michael  and  Stella  sat  apprehensive 
and  silent  in  the  drawing-room.  Sometimes  they  would 
toss  backward  and  forward  to  each  other  reassuring  words, 
while  outside  the  livid  evening  of  ochreous  oppressive  clouds 
and  ashen  pavements  slowly  dislustred  into  a  night  swollen 
with  undelivered  rain  and  baffled  thunders.  } 

About  nine  o'clock  Mrs.  Fane  came  home.    She  stood  for  • 
a  moment  in  the  doorway  of  the  room,  palely  regarding  her  ■ 
children.     She  seemed  undecided  about  something,  but  after 
a  long   pause  she   sat   down   between   them   and   began   to 
speak : 

"Something  has  happened,  dear  children,  that  I  think 
you  ought  to  know  about  before  you  grow  any  older." 

Mrs.  Fane  paused  again  and  stared  before  her,  seeming 
to  be  reaching  out  for  strength  to  continue.  Michael  and 
Stella  sat  breathless  as  the  air  of  the  night.  Mrs.  Fane's 
white  kid  gloves  fell  to  the  floor  softly  like  the  petals  of  a 
blown  rose,  and,  as  if  she  missed  their  companionship  in 
the  stress  of  explication,  she  went  on  more  rapidly. 

"Lord  Saxby  has  died  in  the  Transvaal  of  enteric  fever, 
and  I  think  you  both  ought  to  know  that  Lord  Saxby  was 
your  father." 

When  his  mother  said  this,  the  blood  rushed  to  Michael's 
face  and  then  immediately  receded,  so  that  his  eyelids,  as 
they  closed  over  his  eyes  to  shield  them  from  the  room's 
suddenly  intense  light,  glowed  greenly;  and,  when  he  looked 
again  an,vwhere  save  directly  at  his  mother,  his  heart  seemed 
to  have  been  crushed  between  ice.  The  room  itself  went 
swinging  up  in  loops  out  of  reach  of  his  intelligence,  that 
vainly  strove  to  bring  it  back  to  familiar  conditions.  The 
nightmare  passed;  the  drawing-room  regained  its  shape  and 
orderly  tranquillity;  the  story  went  on. 

"I  have  often  wished  to  tell  you,  Michael,  in  particular,'* 
said  his  mother,  looking  at  him  with  great  gray  eyes  whose 
lustrous  intensity  cooled  his  first  pained  sensation  of  shame- 


PARENTS  479 


fulness.  ''Years  ago,  when  you  were  the  dearest  little  boy, 
and  when  I  was  young  and  rather  lonely  sometimes,  I  longed 
to  tell  you.  But  it  would  not  have  been  fair  to  weigh  you 
down  with  knowledge  that  you  certainly  could  not  have 
grasped  then.  I  thought  it  was  kinder  to  escape  from  your 
questions,  even  when  you  said  that  your  father  looked  like 
a  prince." 

"Did  I?"  Michael  asked,  and  he  fell  to  wondering  why 
he  had  spoken  and  why  his  voice  sounded  so  exactly  the 
same  as  usual. 

"You  see  .  .  .  of  course  ...  I  was  never  married  to 
your  father.  You  must  not  blame  him,  because  he  wanted 
to  marry  me  always,  but  Lady  Saxby  wouldn't  divorce  him. 
I  daresay  she  had  a  right  to  nurse  her  injury.  She  is  still 
alive.  She  lives  in  an  old  Scottish  castle.  Your  father  gave 
up  nearly  all  his  time  to  me.  That  was  why  you  were 
both  alone  so  much.  You  must  forgive  me  for  that,  if  you 
can.  But  I  knew,  as  time  went  on,  that  we  should  never 
be  married,  and  .  .  .  Your  father  only  saw  you  once,  dear- 
est Stella,  when  you  were  very  tiny.  You  remember, 
Michael,  when  you  saw  him.  He  loved  you  so  much,  for 
of  course,  except  in  name,  you  were  his  heir.  He  wanted 
to  have  you  to  live  with  him.     He  loved  you." 

"I  suppose  that's  why  I  liked  him  so  tremendously,"  said 
Michael. 

"Did  you,  dearest  boy?"  said  Mrs.  Fane,  and  the  tears 
were  in  her  gray  eyes.  "Ah,  how  dear  it  is  of  you  to  say 
that." 

"Mother,  I  can't  tell  you  how  sorry  I  am  I  never  went 
to  say  good-bye.  I  shall  never  forgive  myself,"  said 
Michael.     "I  shall  never  forgive  myself." 

"But  you  must.  It  was  my  fault,"  said  his  mother.  "I 
daresay  I  asked  you  tactlessly.  I  was  so  much  upset  at  the 
time  that  I  only  thought  about  myself." 

"Why  did  he  go?"  asked  Stella  suddenly. 


480  YOUTH^S    ENCOUNTER 

"Well,  that  was  my  fault.  I  was  always  so  dreadfully 
worried  over  the  way  in  which  I  had  spoilt  his  life  that 
when  he  thought  he  ought  to  go  and  fight  for  his  country 
I  could  not  bear  to  dissuade  him.  You  see,  having  no  heir, 
he  was  always  fretting  and  fretting  about  the  extinction 
of  his  family,  and  he  had  a  fancy  that  the  last  of  his  name 
should  do  something  for  his  country.  He  had  given  up  his 
country  for  me,  and  I  knew  that  if  he  went  to  the  war 
he  would  feel  that  he  had  paid  the  debt.  I  never  minded 
so  much  that  we  weren't  married,  but  I  always  minded  the 
feeling  that  I  had  robbed  him  by  my  love.  He  was  such  a 
very  dear  fellow.  He  was  always  so  good  and  patient, 
when  I  begged  him  not  to  see  you  both.  That  was  his 
greatest  sorrow.  But  it  wouldn't  have  been  fair  to  you, 
dear  children.  You  must  not  blame  me  for  that.  I  knew 
it  was  better  that  you  should  be  brought  up  in  ignorance. 
It  was,  wasn't  it?"  she  asked  wistfully. 

"Better,"  Michael  murmured. 

"Better,"  Stella  echoed. 

Mrs.  Fane  stood  up,  and  Michael  beheld  her  tall,  tragical 
form  with  a  reverence  he  had  never  felt  for  anything. 

"Children,  you  must  forgive  me,"  she  said. 

And  then  simply,  with  repose  and  exquisite  fitness,  she 
left  Michael  and  Stella  to  themselves.  By  the  door  Stella 
overtook  her. 

"Mother  darling,"  she  cried.  "You  know  we  adore  you. 
You  do,  don't  you?" 

Mrs.  Fane  smiled,  and  Michael  thought  he  would  cherish 
that  smile  to  the  end  of  his  life. 

"Well?"  said  Michael,  when  Stella  and  he  were  sitting 
alone  again. 

"Of  course,  I've  known  for  years  it  was  something  like 
this,"  said  Stella. 

"I  can't  think  why  I  never  guessed.  I  ought  to  have 
guessed  easily,"   Michael  said.     "But  somehow  one  never 


PARENTS  481 


thinks  of  anything  like  this  in  connection  with  one's  own 
mother." 

"Or  sister,"  murmured  Stella,  looking  up  at  a  spot  on 
the  ceiling. 

"I  wish  I  could  kick  myself  for  not  having  said  good-bye 
to  him,"  Michael  declared.  "That  comes  of  talking  too 
much.  I  talked  much  too  much  then.  Talking  destroys 
action.  What  a  beast  I  was.  Lily  and  I  look  rather  small 
now,  don't  we?"  he  went  on.  "When  you  think  of  the 
amount  that  mother  must  have  suffered  all  these  years,  it 
just  makes  Lily  and  me  look  like  illustrations  in  a  book. 
It's  a  curious  thing  that  this  business  about  mother  and 
.  .  .  Lord  Saxby  ought,  I  suppose,  to  make  me  feel  more 
of  a  worm  than  ever,  but  it  doesn't.  Ever  since  the  first 
shock,  I've  been  feeling  prouder  and  prouder.  I  can't  make 
it  out." 

Then  suddenly  Michael  flushed. 

"I  say,  I  wonder  how  many  of  our  friends  have  known 
all  the  time?  Mrs.  Carthew  and  Mrs.  Ross  both  know.  I 
feel  sure  by  what  they've  said.  And  yet  I  wonder  if  Mrs. 
Ross  does  know.  She's  so  strict  in  her  notions  that  ...  I 
wonder  .  .  .  and  yet  I  suppose  she  isn't  so  strict  as  I  thought 
she  was.     Perhaps  I  was  wrong." 

"What  are  you  talking  about?"  Stella  asked. 
"Oh,   something   that  happened   at   Cobble   Place.      It's 
not  important  enough  to  tell  you." 

"What  I'm  wondering,"  said"  Stella,  "is  what  mother 
was  like  when  she  was  my  age.  She  didn't  say  anything 
about  her  family.  But  I  suppose  we  can  ask  her  some  time. 
I'm  really  rather  glad  I'm  not  'Lady  Stella  Fane.'  It 
would  be  ridiculous  for  a  great  pianist  to  be  'Lady  Some- 
thing.' " 

"You  wouldn't  have  been  Lady  Stella  Fane,"  Michael 
contradicted.  "You  would  have  been  Lady  Stella  Cun- 
ningham.   Cunningham  was  the  family  name.     I  remember 


482  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

reading  about  it  all  when  I  was  interested  in  Legitimists." 

"What  are  they?"  Stella  asked.  "The  opposite  of  ille- 
gitimate?" 

Michael  explained  the  difference,  and  he  was  glad  that 
the  word  "illegitimate"  should  first  occur  like  this.  The 
pain  of  its  utterance  seemed  mitigated,  somehow  by  the 
explanation. 

"It's  an  extraordinary  thing,"  Michael  began,  "but,  do 
you  know,  Stella,  that  all  the  agony  of  seeing  Lily  flirting 
seems  to  have  died  away,  and  I  feel  a  sort  of  contempt 
.  .  .  for  myself,  I  mean.  Flirting  sounds  such  a  loath- 
some word  after  what  we've  just  listened  to.  Alan  was 
right,  I  believe.  I  shall  have  to  tell  Alan  about  all  this. 
I  wonder  if  it  will  make  any  difference  to  him.  But  of 
course  it  won't.     Nothing  makes  any  difference  to  Alan." 

"It's  about  time   I  met  him,"  said   Stella. 

"Why,  haven't  you?"  Michael  exclaimed.  "Nor  you 
have.  Great  Scott!  I've  been  so  desperately  miserable 
over  Lily  that  I've  never  asked  Alan  here  once.  Oh,  I 
will,  though." 

"I  say,  oughtn't  we  to  go  up  to  mother?"  said  Stella. 

"Would  she  like  us  to?"  Michael  wondered. 

"Oh,  yes,   I'm  sure  she  would." 

"But  I  can't  express  what  I  feel,"  Michael  complained. 
"And  it  will  be  absurd  to  go  and  stand  in  front  of  her 
like  two  dummies." 

"I'll  say  something,"  Stella  promised;  and,  "Mother," 
she  asked,  "come  and  hear  me  play  to  you." 

The  music-room,  with  its  spare  and  austere  decoration, 
seemed  to  Michael  a  fit  place  for  the  quiet  contemplation 
of  the  tale  of  love  he  had  lately  heard. 

Whatever  of  false  shame,  of  self-consciousness,  of  shock 
remained  was  driven  away  by  Stella's  triumphant  music. 
It  was  as  if  he  were  sitting  beneath  a  mountain  waterfall 
that,  graceful  and  unsubstantial  as  wind-blown  tresses,  was 


PARENTS  483 


yet  most  incomparably  strong,  and  wrought  an  ice-cold,  a 
stern  purification. 

Then  Stella  played  with  healing  gentleness,  and  Michael 
in  the  darkness  kissed  his  mother  and  stole  away  to  bed, 
not  to  dream  of  Lily  that  night,  not  to  toss  enfevered,  but 
quietly  to  lie  awake  devising  how  to  show  his  mother  that 
he  loved  her  as  much  now  as  he  had  loved  her  in  the  dim 
sunlight  of  most  early  childhood. 

About  ten  days  later  Mrs.  Fane  came  to  Michael  and 
Stella  with  a  letter. 

"I  want  to  read  you  something,"  she  said.  "Your 
father's  last  letter  has  come." 

"We  are  in  Pretoria  now,  and  I  think  the  war  will  soon 
be  over.  But  of  course  there's  a  lot  to  be  done  yet.  I'm 
feeling  seedy  to-night,  and  I'm  rather  sighing  for  England. 
I  wonder  if  I'm  going  to  be  ill.  I  have  a  presentiment 
that  things  are  going  wrong  with  me — at  least  not  wrong, 
because  in  a  way  I  would  be  glad.  No,  I  wouldn't,  that 
reads  as  if  I  were  afraid  to  keep  going. 

"I  keep  thinking  of  Michael  and  Stella.  Michael  must 
be  told  soon.  He  must  forgive  me  for  leaving  him  no 
name.  I  keep  thinking  of  those  Siamese  stamps  he  asked 
for  when  I  last  saw  him.  I  wish  I'd  seen  him  again  before 
I  went.  But  I  daresay  you  were  right.  He  would  have 
guessed  who  I  was,  and  he  might  have  gone  away  resent- 
ful." 

Michael  looked  at  his  mother,  and  thanked  her  implicitly 
for  excusing  him.  He  was  glad  that  his  father  had  not 
known  he  had  declined  to  see  him. 

"I  don't  worry  so  much  over  Stella.  If  she  really  has 
the  stuff  in  her  to  make  the  name  you  think  she  will,  she 
does  not  need  any  name  but  her  own.  But  it  maddens  me 
to  think  that  Michael  is  cut  out  of  everything.  I  can 
scarcely  bear  to  realize  that  I  am  the  last.  I'm  glad  he's 
going   to   Oxford,    and   I'm   very   glad    that   he  chose   St. 


484  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

Mary's.  I  was  only  up  at  Christ  Church  a  year,  and  St. 
Mary's  was  a  much  smaller  college  in  those  days.  Now  of 
course  it's  absolutely  one  of  the  best.  Whatever  Michael 
wants  to  do  he  will  be  able  to  do,  thank  God.  I  don't 
expect,  from  what  you  tell  me  of  him,  he'll  choose  the 
Service.  However,  he'll  do  what  he  likes.  When  I  come 
back,  I  must  see  him,  and  I  shall  be  able  to  explain  what 
will  perhaps  strike  him  at  first  as  the  injustice  of  his  posi- 
tion. I  daresay  he'll  think  less  hardly  of  me  when  I've 
told  him  all  the  circumstances.  Poor  old  chap!  I  feel 
that  I've  been  selfish,  and  yet  .  .  . 

"I  wonder  if  I'm  going  to  be  ill.  I  feel  rotten.  But 
don't  worry.  Only,  if  by  any  chance  I  can't  write  again, 
will  you  give  my  love  to  the  children,  and  say  I  hope  they'll 
not  hate  the  thought  of  me.  That  piano  was  the  best 
Prescott  could  get.     I  hope  Stella  is  pleased  with  it." 

"Thanks  awfully  for  reading  us  that,"  said  Michael. 


CHAPTER   XX 
MUSIC 

MRS.  FANE,  having  momentarily  lifted  the  veil 
that  all  these  years  had  hidden  her  personality 
from  Michael  and  Stella,  dropped  it  very  swiftly 
again.  Only  the  greatest  emotion  could  have  given  her  the 
courage  to  make  that  avowal  of  her  life.  During  the  days 
that  elapsed  between  the  revelation  and  the  reading  of  Lord 
Saxby's  last  letter,  she  had  lived  very  much  apart  from  her 
children,  so  that  the  spectacle  of  her  solitary  grief  had  been 
deeply  impressed  upon  their  sensibility. 

Michael  was  reminded  by  her  attitude  of  those  long 
vigils  formerly  sustained  by  ladies  of  noble  birth  before 
they  departed  into  a  convent  to  pray,  eternally  remote  from 
the  world.  He  himself  became  endowed  with  a  strange 
courage  by  the  contemplation  of  his  mother's  tragical  immo- 
bility. He  found  in  her  the  expression  of  those  most  voice- 
less ideals  of  austere  conduct  that  until  this  vision  of  resig- 
nation had  always  seemed  doomed  to  sink  broken-winged  to 
earth.  The  thought  of  Lily  in  this  mood  became  an  intru- 
sion, and  he  told  himself  that,  even  if  it  were  possible  to 
seek  the  sweet  unrest  of  her  presence,  beneath  the  somber 
spell  of  this  more  classic  sorrow  he  would  have  shunned 
that  lovely  and  romantic  girl.  Michael's  own  realization 
of  the  circumstances  of  his  birth  occupied  a  very  small  part 
of  his  thoughts.  His  mind  was  fixed  upon  the  aspect  of 
his  mother  mute  and  heavy-lidded  from  the  remembrance 

485 


486  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

of  that  soldier  dead  in  Africa.  Michael  felt  no  outrage 
of  fate  in  these  events.  He  was  glad  that  death  should 
have  brought  to  his  father  the  contentment  of  his  country's 
honor,  that  in  the  grace  of  reconciliation  he  should  be  healed 
of  his  thwarted  life.  Nor  could  Michael  resent  that  news 
of  death  which  could  ennoble  his  mother  with  this  placidity 
of  comprehension,  this  staid  and  haughty  mien  of  sorrow. 
And  he  was  grateful,  too,  that  death  should  upon  his  own 
brow  dry  the  fever  dew  of  passion 

But  when  she  read  that  last  letter,  Mrs.  Fane 
strangely  resumed  her  ordinary  self.  She  was  always  so 
finely  invested  with  dignity,  so  exquisitely  sheathed  in  her 
repose,  Michael  scarcely  realized  that  now,  after  she  had 
read  the  letter,  the  vision  of  her  grief  was  once  more  veiled 
against  him  by  that  faintly  discouraging,  tenderly  deliberate 
withdrawal  of  her  personality,  and  that  she  was  still  as 
seclusive  as  when  from  his  childhood  she  had  concealed  the 
sight  of  her  love,  living  in  her  own  rose-misted  and  im- 
penetrable privacy. 

It  was  Stella  who  by  a  sudden  request  first  roused 
Michael  to  the  realization  that  his  mother  was  herself 
again. 

''Mother,"  she  said,  "what  about  my  first  concert?  The 
season  is  getting  late." 

"Dearest  Stella,"  Mrs.  Fane  replied,  "I  think  you  can 
scarcely  make  your  appearance  so  soon  after  your  father's 
death." 

"But,  mother,  I'm  sure  he  wouldn't  have  minded.  And 
after  all  very  few  people  would  know,"  Stella  persisted. 

"But  I  should  prefer  that  you  waited  for  a  while,"  said 
Mrs.  Fane,  gently  reproachful.  "You  forget  that  we  are 
in  mourning." 

For  Michael  somehow  the  conventional  expression  seemed 
to  disturb  the  divinity  of  his  mother's  carven  woe.  The 
world  suddenly  intervened. 


MUSIC  487 


"Well,  I  don't  think  I  ought  to  wait  for  ever,"  said 
Stella. 

"Darling  child,  I  wonder  why  you  should  think  it  neces- 
sary to  exaggerate  so  foolishly,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 

"But  I'm  so  longing  to  begin,"  Stella  went  on. 

"I  don't  know  that  anybody  has  ever  suggested  you 
shouldn't  begin,"  Mrs.  Fane  observed.  "But  there  is  a 
difference  between  your  recklessness  and  my  more  carefully 
considered  plans." 

"Mother,  will  you  agree  to  a  definite  date?"  Stella  de- 
manded. 

"By  all  means,  dear  child,  if  you  will  try  to  be  a  little 
less  boisterous  and  impetuous.  For  one  thing,  I  never 
knew  you  were  ready  to  begin  at  once  like  this." 

"Oh,  mother,  after  all  these  years  and  years  of  practic- 
ing!" Stella  protested. 

"But  are  you  ready?"  Mrs.  Fane  inquired  in  soft  sur- 
prise. "Really  ready?  Then  why  not  this  autumn?  Why 
not  October?" 

"Before   I   go  up   to   Oxford,"   said   Michael    quickly. 

Stella  was  immediately  and  vividly  alert  w^ith  plans  for 
her  concert. 

"I  don't  think  any  of  the  smaller  halls.  Couldn't  I 
appear  first  at  one  of  the  big  orchestral  concerts  at  King's 
Hall?  I  w^ould  like  to  play  a  concerto  .  .  .  Chopin,  I 
think,  and  nothing  else.  Then  later  on  I  could  have  a  con- 
cert all  to  myself,  and  play  Schumann,  and  perhaps  some 
Brahms." 

So  in  the  end  it  was  settled  after  numberless  interviews, 
letters,  fixtures,  cancellations,  and  all  the  fuming  impedi- 
ments of  art's  first  presentation  at  the  court  of  the  world. 

The  affairs  and  arrangements  connected  with  Stella's 
career  seemed  to  Michael  the  proper  distraction  for  his 
mother  and  sister  during  his  last  two  or  three  weeks  of 
school,  before  they  could  leave  London.     Mrs.   Fane  had 


488  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

suggested  they  should  go  to  Switzerland  in  August,  staying 
at  Lucerne,  so  that  Stella  would  not  be  hindered  in  her 
steady  practice. 

Michael's  last  week  at  school  was  a  curiously  unreal  ex- 
perience. As  fast  as  he  marshaled  the  correct  sentiments 
with  which  to  approach  the  last  hours  of  a  routine  that  had 
continued  for  ten  years,  so  fast  did  they  break  up  in  futile 
disorder.  He  had  really  passed  beyond  the  domain  of 
school  some  time  ago  when  he  was  always  with  Lily.  It 
was  impossible  after  that  gradual  secession,  all  the  more 
final  because  it  had  been  so  gradual,  to  gather  together  now 
a  crowd  of  associations  for  the  sole  purpose  of  effecting 
a  violent  and  summary  wrench.  Indeed,  the  one  action 
that  gave  him  the  expected  pang  of  sentiment  was  w^hen 
he  went  to  surrender  across  the  counter  of  the  book-room 
the  key  of  his  locker.  The  number  was  seventy-five.  In 
very  early  days  Michael  had  been  proud  of  possessing, 
through  a  happy  accident,  a  locker  on  the  ground-floor  very 
close  to  the  entrance-hall.  His  junior  contemporaries  were 
usually  banished  to  remote  corridors  in  the  six-hundreds, 
waiting  eagerly  to  inherit  from  departed  seniors  the  more 
convenient  lockers  dow^nstairs.  But  Michael  from  the  day 
he  first  heard  by  the  cast  of  the  Laocoon  the  shufliie  of 
quick  feet  along  the  corridor  had  owned  the  most  con- 
venient locker  in  all  the  school.  At  the  last  moment 
Michael  thought  he  would  forfeit  the  half-crown  long  ago 
deposited  and  keep  the  key,  but  in  the  end  he,  with  the 
rest  of  his  departing  contemporaries,  callously  accepted  the 
more  useful  half-crown. 

School  broke  up  in  a  sudden  heartless  confusion,  and 
Michael  for  the  last  time  stood  gossiping  outside  the  school- 
doors  at  five  o'clock.  For  a  minute  he  felt  an  absurd  desire 
to  pick  up  a  stone  and  fling  it  through  the  window  of  the 
nearest  class-room,  not  from  any  spirit  of  indignation,  but 


MUSIC  489 


merely  to  assure  himself  of  a  physical  freedom  that  he  had 
not  yet  realized. 

"Where  are  you  going  for  the  holidays,  Bangs?"  some- 
one asked. 

"Switzerland." 

"Hope  you'll  have  a  good  time.  See  you  next — oh,  by 
Jove,  I  shan't  though.  Good-bj^e,  hope  you'll  have  good 
luck." 

"Thanks,"  said  Michael,  and  he  had  a  fleeting  view  of 
himself  relegated  to  the  past,  one  of  that  scattered  host — 

Thick  as  autumnal  leaves  that  strew  the  brooks 
In  Vallombrosa — 

Old  Jacobeans,  ghostly,  innumerable,  whose  desks  like 
tombstones  would  bear  for  a  little  while  the  perishable  ink 
of  their  own  idle  epitaphs. 

Lucerne  was  airless;  the  avenue  of  pollarded  limes 
sheltered  a  depressed  bulk  of  dusty  tourists;  the  atmos- 
phere was  impregnated  with  bourgeois  exclamations;  the 
very  surface  of  the  lake  was  swarming  with  humanity, 
noisy  with  the  click  of  rowlocks,  and  with  the  gutturals 
that  seemed  to  praise  fitly  such  a  theatrical  setting. 

Mrs.  Fane  wondered  why  they  had  come  to  Switzerland, 
but  still  she  asked  Michael  and  Stella  whether  they  would 
like  to  venture  higher.  Michael,  perceiving  the  hordes  of 
Teutonic  nomads  who  were  sweeping  up  into  the  heart  of 
the  mountains,  thought  that  Switzerland  in  August  would 
be  impossible  whatever  lonely  height  they  gained.  They 
moved  to  Geneva,  whose  silver-pointed  beauty  for  a  while 
deceived  them,  but  soon  both  he  and  Stella  became  restless 
and  irritable. 

"Switzerland  is  like  sitting  in  a  train  and  traveling 
through  glorious  country,"  said  Michael.  "It's  all  right 
for  a  journey,  but  it  becomes  frightfully  tiring.  And, 
32 


490  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

mother,  I  do  hate  the  sensation  that  all  these  people  round 
are  feeling  compelled  to  enjoy  themselves.  It's  like  a  hearty 
choral  service." 

"It's  like  an  oratorio,"  said  Stella.  "I  can't  play  a 
note  here.     The  very  existence  of  these  mobs  is  deafening." 

"Well,  I  don't  mind  where  we  go,"  said  Mrs.  Fane. 
'Tm  not  enjoying  these  peculiar  tourists  myself.  Shall  we 
go  to  the  Italian  lakes?  I  used  to  like  them  very  much. 
I've  spent  many  happy  days  there." 

"I'd  rather  go  to  France,"  said  Michael.  "Only  don't 
let's  go  far.  Let's  go  to  Lyons  and  find  out  some  small 
place  in  the  country.  I  was  talking  to  a  decent  chap — not 
a  tourist — who  said  there  were  delightful  little  red-roofed 
towns  in  the  Lyonnais." 

So  they  left  Switzerland  and  went  to  Lyons,  where,  sit- 
ting under  the  shade  of  trees  by  the  tumbling  blue  Rhone, 
they  settled  with  a  polite  agent  to  take  a  small  house  near 
Chatillon. 

Hither  a  piano  followed  them,  and  here  for  seven  weeks 
they  lived,   each  one  lost   in  sun-dyed   dreams. 

"I  knew  we  should  like  this,"  Michael  said  to  Stella,  as 
they  leaned  against  tubs  of  rosy  oleanders  on  a  lizard- 
streaked  wall,  and  watched  some  great  white  oxen  go 
smoothly  by.  "I  like  this  heart  of  France  better  than 
Brittany  or  Normandy.  But  I  hope  mother  won't  be 
bored  here." 

"There  are  plenty  of  books,"  said  Stella.  "And  anyway 
she  wants  to  lie  back  and  think,  and  it's  impossible  to 
think  except  in  the  sun." 

The  oxen  were  still  in  sight  along  the  road  that  wound 
upward  to  where  Chatillon  clustered  red  upon  its  rounded 
hill. 

"It  doesn't  look  like  a  real  town,"  said  Michael.  "It's 
really  not  different  from  the  red  sunbaked  earth  all  about 
here.     I  feel  it  would  be  almost  a  pity  ever  to  walk  up  that 


MUSIC  491 


road  and  find  it  is  a  town.  I  vote  we  never  go  quite  close, 
but  just  sit  here  and  watch  it  changing  color  all  through 
the  day.     I  never  want  to  move  out  of  this  garden." 

"I  can't  walk  about  much,"  said  Stella.  "Because  I 
simply  must  practice  and  practice  and  practice  and  prac- 
tice." 

They  always  woke  up  early  in  the  morning,  and  Michael 
used  to  watch  Chatillon  purple-bloomed  with  the  shadow 
of  the  fled  night,  then  hazy  crimson  for  a  few  minutes 
until  the  sun  came  high  enough  to  give  it  back  the  rich 
burnt  reds  of  the  day.  All  through  the  morning  Michael 
used  to  sit  among  the  peach  trees  of  the  garden,  while 
Stella  played.  All  through  the  morning  he  used  to  read 
novel  after  novel  of  ephemeral  fame  that  here  on  the  un- 
disturbed shelves  had  acquired  a  certain  permanence.  In 
the  afternoon  Stella  and  he  used  to  wander  through  the 
vineyards  down  to  a  shallow  brown  stream  bordered  by 
poplars  and  acacias,  or  in  sun-steeped  oak  woods  idly  chase 
the  long  lizards  splendid  with  their  black  and  yellow  loz- 
enges and  shimmering  green  mail. 

Once  in  a  village  at  harvest-time,  when  the  market  place 
was  a  fathom  deep  in  golden  corn,  they  helped  in  the 
threshing,  and  once,  when  the  grain  had  been  stored,  they 
danced  here  with  joyful  country-folk  under  the  moon. 

During  tea-time  they  would  sit  with  their  mother  beneath 
an  almond  tree,  while  beyond  in  sunlit  air  vibrant  with  the 
glad  cicadas,  butterflies  wantoned  with  the  oleanders,  or 
upon  the  wall  preened  their  slow  fans.  Later,  they  would 
pace  a  walk  bordered  by  tawny  tea-roses,  and  out  of  the 
globed  melons  they  would  scent  the  garnered  warmth  of 
the  day  floating  forth  to  mingle  with  the  sweet  breath  of 
eve.  Now  was  the  hour  to  climb  the  small  hill  behind  the 
peach  trees.  Here  across  the  mighty  valley  of  the  Saone 
they  could  see  a  hundred  miles  away  the  Alps  riding  across 
the  horizon,  light  as  clouds.     And  on  the  other  side  over 


492 


YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 


their  own  little  house  lay  Chatillon  cherry-bright  in  the 
sunset,  then  damson-dark  for  a  while,  until  it  turned  to  a 
velvet  gloom  prickled  with  points  of  gold  and  slashed  with 
orange  stains. 

Michael  and  Stella  always  went  to  bed  when  the  land- 
scape had  faded  out.  But  often  Michael  would  sit  for  a 
long  time  and  pore  upon  the  rustling,  the  dark,  the  moth- 
haunted  night;  or  if  the  moon  were  up  he  would  in  fancies 
swim  out  upon  her  buoyant  watery  sheen. 

Sometimes,  as  he  sat  among  the  peach  trees,  a  thought  of 
Lily  w^ould  come  to  him;  and  he  would  imagine  her  form 
swinging  round  the  corner.  The  leaves  and  sunlight,  while 
he  dreamed  of  her,  dappled  the  unread  pages  of  his  book. 
He  would  picture  himself  with  Lily  on  these  sunny  uplands 
of  the  Lyonnais,  and  gradually  she  lost  her  urban  actuality; 
gradually  the  disillusionment  of  her  behavior  was  forgotten. 
With  the  obliteration  of  Lily's  failure  the  anguish  for  her 
bodily  form  faded  out,  and  Michael  began  to  mould  her  to 
an  incorporeal  idea  of  first  love.  In  this  clear  air  she  stood 
before  him  recreated,  as  if  the  purifying  sun,  which  was 
burning  him  to  the  likeness  of  the  earth  around,  had  been 
able  at  the  same  time  to  burn  that  idea  of  young  love  to  a 
slim  Etruscan  shape  which  could  thrill  him  forever  with 
its  beauty,  but  nevermore  fret  him  with  the  urgency  of 
desire.  He  was  glad  he  had  not  spoken  to  her  again  after 
that  garden  interlude;  and,  though  his  heart  would  have 
leapt  to  see  her  motionable  and  swaying  to  his  glances  as 
she  came  delicately  toward  him  through  the  peach  trees, 
Michael  felt  that  somehow  he  would  not  kiss  her,  but  that 
he  would  rather  lead  her  gravely  to  the  hill-top  and  set 
her  near  him  to  stay  forever  still,  forever  young,  forever 
fair. 

So  all  through  that  summer  the  sun  burned  Michael, 
while  day  by  day  the  white  unhurried  oxen  moved,  slow  as 
clouds,  up  the  hill  toward  the  town.     But  Michael  never 


MUSIC  493 


followed  their  shambling  steps,  and  therefore  he  never 
destroyed  his   dream  of   Chatillon. 

As  the  time  drew  nearer  and  nearer  for  Stella's  concert, 
she  practiced  more  incessantly.  Nor  would  she  walk  now 
with  Michael  through  the  vineyards  down  to  the  shallow 
poplar-shadowed  stream.  Michael  was  seized  with  a 
reverence  for  her  tireless  concentration,  and  he  never  tried 
to  make  her  break  this  rule  of  work,  but  would  always 
wander  away  by  himself. 

One  day,  when  he  was  lying  on  a  parched  upland  ridge, 
Michael  had  a  vision  of  Alan  in  green  England.  Suddenly 
he  realized  that  in  a  few  weeks  they  would  be  setting  out 
together  for  Oxford.  The  dazzling  azure  sky  of  France 
lightened  to  the  blown  softness  of  an  English  April. 
Cloistral  he  saw  Oxford,  and  by  the  base  of  St.  Mary's 
Tower  the  people,  small  as  emmets,  hurrying.  The  roofs 
and  spires  were  wet  with  rain,  and  bells  w^ere  ringing.  He 
saw  the  faces  of  all  those  who  from  various  schools  would 
encounter  with  him  the  grayness  and  the  grace  of  Oxford, 
and  among  them  was  Alan. 

How  familiar  Oxford  seemed  after  all! 

The  principal  fact  that  struck  Michael  about  Stella  in 
these  days  of  practicing  for  her  concert  was  her  capacity 
for  renouncing  all  extravagance  of  speech  and  her  steady 
withdrawal  from  everything  that  did  not  bear  directly 
on  her  work.  She  no  longer  talked  of  her  brilliance;  she 
no  longer  tried  to  astonish  Michael  with  predictions  of 
genius;  she  became  curiously  and  impressively  diligent,  and, 
without  conveying  an  idea  of  easy  self-confidence,  she  man- 
aged to  make  Michael  feel  perfectly  sure  of  her  success. 

During  the  latter  half  of  September  Michael  went  to 
stay  with  Alan  at  Richmond,  partly  because  with  the  near- 
ness of  Stella's  appearance  he  began  to  feel  nervous,  and 
partly  because  he  found  speculation  about  Oxford  in  Alan's 
company   a   very    diverting   pursuit.      From   Richmond   he 


494  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

went  up  at  the  end  of  the  month  in  order  to  pass  Respon- 
sions  without  difficulty.  On  the  sixth  of  October  was  the 
concert  at  King's  Hall. 

Michael  had  spent  a  good  deal  of  time  in  sending  letters 
to  all  the  friends  he  could  think  of,  inviting  their  attendance 
on  this  occasion  of  importance.  He  even  wrote  to  Wilmot 
and  many  of  the  people  he  had  met  at  Edwardes  Square. 
Everyone  must  help  in  Stella's  triumph. 

At  the  beginning  of  October  Mrs.  Ross  arrived  at  the 
Merivales'  house,  and  for  the  first  time  since  their  con- 
versation in  the  orchard  she  and  Michael  met.  He  was  shy 
at  first,  but  Mrs.  Ross  was  so  plainly  anxious  to  show  that 
she  regarded  him  as  affectionately  as  ever  that  Michael 
found  himself  able  to  resume  his  intimacy  at  once.  How- 
ever, since  Stella  was  always  uppermost  in  his  thoughts, 
he  did  not  test  Mrs.  Ross  with  any  more  surprising  ad- 
missions. 

On  the  night  before  the  concert  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Merivale, 
Mrs.  Ross,  Alan  and  Michael  sat  in  the  drawing-room, 
talking  over  the  concert  from  every  point  of  view. 

"Of  course  she'll  be  a  success,"  said  Mr.  Merivale,  and 
managed  to  implicate  himself  as  usual  in  a  network  of  bad 
puns  that  demanded  the  heartiest  reprobation  from  his 
listeners. 

"Dear  little  girl,"  said  Mrs.  Merivale  placidly.  "How 
nice  it  is  to  see  children  doing  things." 

"Of  course  she'll  be  a  success,"  Alan  vowed.  "You've 
only  got  to  look  at  her  to  see  that.  By  gad,  what  an  off- 
drive  she  w^ould  have  had,  if  she'd  only  been  a  boy." 

Michael  looked  at  Alan  quickly.  This  was  the  first  time 
he  had  ever  heard  him  praise  a  girl  of  his  own  accord.  He 
made  up  his  mind  to  ask  Stella  when  her  concert  was  over 
how  Alan  had  impressed  her. 

"Dear  Michael,"  said  Mrs.  Ross  earnestly,  "you  must 
not  worry  about  Stella.     Don't  you  remember  how  years 


MUSIC  495 


ago  I  said  she  would  be  a  great  pianist?  And  you  were  so 
amusing  about  it,  because  you  would  insist  that  you  didn't 
like  her  playing." 

"Nor  I  did,"  said  Michael  in  laughing  defence  of  himself 
at  eight  years  old.  '1  used  to  think  it  was  the  most  melan- 
choly noise  on  earth.  Sometimes  I  think  so  now,  when 
Stella  wraps  herself  up  in  endless  scales.  By  Jove,"  he 
suddenly  exclaimed,  "what's  the  time?" 

"Half-past  eight  nearly.    Why?"  Alan  asked. 

"I  forgot  to  write  and  tell  Viner  to  come.  It's  not  very 
late.  I  think  I'll  go  over  to  Notting  Hill  now,  and  ask 
him.  I  haven't  been  to  see  him  much  lately,  and  he  was 
always  awfully  decent  to  me." 

Mr.  Viner  was  reading  in  his  smoke-hung  room. 

"Hullo,"  he  said.  "You've  not  been  near  me  for  almost 
a  year." 

"I  know,"  said  Michael  apologetically.  "I  feel  rather 
a  brute.     Some  time  I'll  tell  you  why." 

Then  suddenly  Michael  wondered  if  the  priest  knew 
about  Lord  Saxby,  and  he  felt  shy  of  him.  He  felt  that  he 
could  not  talk  intimately  to  him  until  he  had  told  him 
about  the  circumstances  of  his  birth. 

"Is  that  what's  been  keeping  you  away?"  asked  the 
priest.  "Because,  let  me  tell  you,  I've  known  all  about  you 
for  some  years.  And  look  here,  Michael,  don't  get  into 
your  head  that  you've  got  to  make  this  sort  of  announce- 
ment every  time  you  form  a  new  friendship." 

"Oh,  that  wasn't  the  reason  I  kept  away,"  said  Michael. 
"But  I  don't  want  to  talk  about  myself.  I  want  to  talk 
about  my  sister.  She's  going  to  play  at  the  King's  Hall 
concert    to-morrow   night.      You   will   come,    won't   you?" 

"Of  course  I  will,"  said  the  priest. 

"Thanks,  and — er — if  you  could  think  about  her  when 
you're  saying  Mass  to-morrow  morning,  why,    I'd   rather 


496  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

like  to  serve  you,  if  I  may.  I  must  tear  back  now,"  Michael 
added.     "Good-night." 

"Good-night,"  said  the  priest,  and  as  Michael  turned  in 
the  doorway  his  smile  was  like  a  benediction. 

Very  early  on  the  next  morning  through  the  curdled 
October  mists  Michael  went  over  to  Notting  Hill  again. 
The  Mission  Church  stood  obscurely  amid  a  press  of  mean 
houses  and,  as  Michael  hurried  along  the  fetid  narrow 
thoroughfare,  the  bell  for  Mass  was  clanging  among  the 
fog  and  smoke.  Here  and  there  women  were  belaboring 
their  doorsteps  with  mangy  mats  or  leaning  with  grimed 
elbows  on  their  sills  in  depressed  anticipation  of  a  day's 
drudgery.  From  bedridden  rooms  came  the  sound  of  chil- 
dren wailing  and  fighting  over  breakfast.  Lean  cats  nosed 
in  the  garbage  strewn  along  the  gutters. 

The  Mission  Church  smelt  strongly  of  soap  and  stale 
incense,  and  in  the  frore  atmosphere  the  colored  pictures 
on  the  walls  looked  more  than  usually  crude  and  violent. 
It  was  the  Octave  of  St.  Michael  and  All  Angels,  and  the 
white  chrysanthemums  on  the  altar  were  beginning  to  turn 
brown.  There  was  not  a  large  congregation — two  sisters 
of  mercy,  three  or  four  pious  and  dowdy  maiden  ladies 
and  the  sacristan.  It  was  more  than  two  years  since  Michael 
had  served  at  Mass,  and  he  was  glad  and  grateful  to  find 
that  every  small  ceremony  still  seemed  sincere  and  fit  and 
inevitable.  There  was  an  exquisite  morning  stillness  in 
this  small  tawdry  church,  and  Michael  thought  how  strange 
it  was  that  in  this  festering  corner  of  the  city  it  was 
possible  to  create  so  profound  a  sense  of  mystery.  What- 
ever emotion  he  gained  of  peace  and  reconciliation  and 
brooding  holiness  he  vowed  to  Stella  and  to  her  fame  and 
to  her  joy. 

After  Mass  Michael  went  back  to  breakfast  with  Mr. 
Viner  and,  as  they  sat  talking  about  Oxford,  Michael 
thought  how  various  Oxford  was  compared  with  school, 


MUSIC  497 


how  many  different  kinds  of  people  would  be  appropriate 
to  their  surroundings,  and  he  began  with  some  of  the  ardor 
that  he  had  given  hitherto  to  envy  of  life  to  covet  all  vari- 
eties of  intellectual  experience.  What  a  wonderfully  sug- 
gestive word  was  University,  and  how  exciting  it  was  to 
see  Viner  tabulating  introductions  for  his  benefit. 

Michael  sat  by  himself  at  the  concert.  During  the 
afternoon  he  had  talked  to  Stella  for  a  few  minutes,  but 
she  had  seemed  more  than  ever  immeasurably  remote  from 
conversation,  and  Michael  had  contented  himself  with 
offering  stock  phrases  of  encouragement  and  exhortation. 
He  went  early  to  King's  Hall  and  sat  high  up  in  the 
topmost  corner  looking  down  on  the  orchestra.  Gradually 
through  the  bluish  mist  the  indefinite  audience  thickened, 
and  their  accumulated  voices  echoed  less  and  less.  The 
members  of  the  orchestra  had  not  yet  entered,  but  their 
music-stands  stood  about  with  a  ridiculous  likeness  to  human 
beings.  In  the  middle  was  Stella's  piano  black  and  lifeless, 
a  little  ominous  in  its  naked  and  insistent  and  faintly 
shining  ebon  solemnity.  One  of  the  orchestra  threaded  his 
way  through  the  chairs  to  where  the  drums  stood  in  a 
bizarre  group.  From  time  to  time  this  lonely  human  figure 
struck  his  instruments  to  test  their  pitch,  and  the  low 
boom  sounded  hollowly  above  the  murmurous  audience. 

A  general  accession  of  light  took  place,  and  now  suddenly 
the  empty  platform  was  filled  with  nonchalant  men  who 
gossiped  while  they  made  discordant  sounds  upon  their 
instruments.  The  conductor  came  in  and  bowed.  The 
audience  clapped.  There  was  a  momentary  hush,  followed 
by  a  sharp  rat-tat  of  the  baton,  and  the  Third  Leonora 
Overture  began. 

To  Michael  the  music  was  a  blur.  It  was  soundless 
beside  his  own  beating  heart,  his  heart  that  thudded  on  and 
on,  on  and  on,  while  the  faces  of  the  audience  receded 
farther    and    farther    through    the    increasing   haze.      The 


498  YOUTH'S   ENCOUNTER 

Overture  was  finished.  From  the  hall  that  every  moment 
seemed  to  grow  darker  came  a  sound  of  ghostly  applause. 
Michael  looked  at  his  program  in  a  fever.  What  was  this 
unpronounceable  German  composition,  this  Tonic  Poem  that 
must  be  played  before  Stella's  turn  would  arrive?  It 
seemed  to  go  on  forever  in  a  most  barbaric  and  amorphous 
din;  with  corybantic  crashings,  with  brazen  fanfares  and 
stinging  cymbals  it  flung  itself  against  the  audience,  while 
the  wood-wind  howled  and  the  violins  were  harsh  as  cats. 
Michael  brooded  unreceptive;  he  had  a  sense  of  mon- 
strous loneliness;  he  could  think  of  nothing.  The  noise 
overpowered  his  beating  heart,  and  he  began  to  count 
absurdly,  while  he  bit  his  nails  or  shivered  in  alternations 
of  fire  and  snow.  Then  his  program  fluttered  down  onto 
the  head  of  a  bald  violoncellist,  and  the  ensuing  shock  of 
self-consciousness,  that  was  mingled  with  a  violent  desire 
to  laugh  very  loudly,  restored  him  to  his  normal  calm. 
The  Tonic  Poem  shrieked  and  tore  itself  to  death.  The 
World  became  very  quiet. 

There  was  a  gradual  flap  of  rising  applause,  and  it  was 
Stella  who,  tall  and  white,  was  being  handed  across  the 
platform.  It  was  Stella  who  was  sitting  white  and  rigid  at 
the  black  piano  that  suddenly  seemed  to  have  shrunk  into 
a  puny  insignificance.  It  was  Stella  whose  fingers  were 
causing  those  rills  of  melody  to  flow.  She  paused,  while 
the  orchestra  took  up  their  part,  and  then  again  the  rills 
began  to  flow,  gently,  fiercely,  madly,  sadly,  wildly.  Now 
she  seemed  to  contend  against  the  mighty  odds  of  innumer- 
able rival  instruments;  now  her  own  frail  instrument 
seemed  to  flag;  now  she  was  gaining  strength;  her  cool 
clear  harmonies  were  subduing  this  welter  of  violins,  this 
tempest  of  horns  and  clarionets,  this  menace  of  bass-viols 
and  drums.  The  audience  was  extinguished  like  a  candle. 
The  orchestra  seemed  inspired  by  the  angry  forces  of  nature 
herself.    The  bows  of  the  violins  whitened  and  flickered  like 


MUSIC  499 


willows  in  a  storm,  and  yet  amid  this  almost  intolerable 
movement  Stella  sat  still  as  a  figure  of  eternal  stone.  A 
faint  smile  curved  more  sharply  her  lips;  the  black  bows 
in  her  hair  trembled  against  her  white  dress ;  her  wonderful 
hands  went  galloping  away  to  right  and  left  of  her  straight 
back.  Plangent  as  music  itself,  serene  as  sculpture,  with 
smiling  lips  magically  crimson,  adorably  human,  she  finished 
her  first  concerto.  And  while  she  bowed  to  the  audience 
and  to  the  orchestra  and  the  great  shaggy  conductor,  Michael 
saw  ridiculous  teardrops  bedewing  his  sleeve,  not  because 
he  had  been  moved  by  the  music,  but  because  he  was  unable 
to  shake  by  the  hand  every  single  person  in  King's  Hall 
who  was  now  applauding  his  sister. 

It  was  not  until  Beethoven's  somber  knock  at  the  opening 
of  the  Fifth  Symphony  that  Michael  began  to  dream  upon 
the  deeps  of  great  music,  that  his  thoughts  liberated  from 
anxiety  went  straying  into  time.  Stella,  when  for  a  little 
while  he  had  reveled  in  her  success,  was  forgotten,  and  the 
people  in  this  hall,  listening,  listening,  began  to  move  him 
with  their  unimaginable  variety.  Near  him  were  lovers 
who  in  this  symphony  were  fast  imparadised ;  their  hands 
were  interlaced ;  visibly  they  swayed  nearer  to  each  other 
on  the  waves  of  melody.  Old  men  were  near  him,  solitary 
old  men  listening,  listening  .  .  .  old  men  who  at  the  sum- 
mons of  these  ringing  notes  were  traversing  their  past  that 
otherwise  might  have  stayed   forever  unvoyageable. 

Michael  sometimes  craved  for  Lily's  company,  wished 
that  he  could  clasp  her  to  him  and  swoon  away  upon  these 
blinding  chords.  But  she  was  banished  from  this  world  of 
music,  she  who  had  betrayed  the  beauty  of  love.  There 
was  something  more  noble  in  this  music  than  the  memory 
of  a  slim  and  lovely  girl  and  of  her  flower-soft  kisses.  The 
world  itself  surely  seemed  to  travel  the  faster  for  this  urgent 
sj^mphony.  Michael  was  spinning  face  to  face  with  the 
spinning  stars. 


500  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

And  then  some  thread  of  simple  melody  would  bring 
him  back  to  the  green  world  and  the  little  memories  of  his 
boyhood.  Now  more  than  ever  did  it  seem  worth  while  to 
live  on  earth.  He  recognized,  as  if  suddenly  he  had  come 
dow^n  from  incredible  heights,  familiar  faces  in  the  audience. 
He  saw  his  mother  with  Mrs.  Ross  beside  her,  two  figures 
that  amid  all  this  intoxication  of  speeding  life  must  for- 
ever mourn.  Now,  while  the  flood  of  music  was  sounding 
in  his  ears,  he  wished  that  he  could  fly  down  through  this 
dim  hall,  and  tell  them,  as  they  sat  there  in  black  w^ith 
memories  beside  them,  how  well  he  loved  them,  how  much 
he  honored  them,  how  eagerly  he  demanded  from  them 
pride  in  himself. 

After  the  first  emotions  of  the  mighty  music  had  worn 
themselves  out,  Michael's  imagination  began  to  wander 
rapidly.  At  one  point  the  bassoons  became  very  active, 
and  he  was  somehow  reminded  of  Mr.  Neech.  He  was 
puzzled  for  a  while  to  account  for  this  association  of  an 
old  form-master  with  the  noise  of  bassoons.  For  he  heard 
the  loud  bassoon.  Out  of  the  past  came  the  vision  of  old 
Neech  w^agging  the  tail  of  his  gown  as  he  strode  back- 
ward and  forward  over  the  floor  of  the  Shell  class-room. 
The  luedding-guest  here  beat  his  breast.  For  he  heard 
the  loud  bassoon.  Out  of  the  past  came  the  shrill  sound 
of  boys'  ruining  The  Ancient  Mariner,  and  Michael  heard 
again  the  outraged  apostrophes  of  Mr.  Neech.  He  began 
to  create  from  his  fancy  of  Mr.  Neech  a  grotesque  symbol 
of  public-school  education.  Certainly  he  was  the  only  mas- 
ter who  had  taught  him  anything.  Yet  he  had  probably 
tried  less  to  teach  earnestly  than  any  other  master.  Why 
did  this  image  of  Mr.  Neech  materialize  whenever  his 
thoughts  went  back  to  school?  Years  had  passed  since  he 
had  enjoyed  the  Shell.  He  had  never  talked  intimately  to 
Neech;  indeed,  he  had  scarcely  held  any  communication 
with  him  since  he  left  his  form.     The  influence  of  Neech 


MUSIC  501 


must  have  depended  on  a  personality  that  demanded  from 
his  pupils  a  stoic  bearing,  a  sense  of  humor,  a  capacity  for 
inquisitiveness,  an  idea  of  continuity.  He  could  not  re- 
member that  any  of  these  qualities  had  been  appreciated 
by  himself  until  he  had  entered  the  Shell.  Michael  re- 
gretted very  deeply  that  on  the  day  before  he  left  school 
he  had  not  thanked  Neech  for  his  existence.  How  nebulous 
already  most  of  his  other  masters  seemed.  Only  Neech 
stood  out  clear-cut  as  the  intagliation  of  a  sardonyx. 

Meditation  upon  Neech  took  Michael  ofE  to  Thackeray. 
He  had  been  reading  Pendennis  lately,  and  the  book  had 
given  him  much  the  same  sensation  of  finality  as  his  old 
form-master,  and,  as  Michael  thought  of  Thackeray,  he 
began  to  speculate  upon  the  difference  between  Michael 
Fane  and  the  fourteenth  Earl  of  Saxbj^  Yet  he  was  rather 
glad  that  after  all  he  was  not  the  fourteenth  Earl  of  Saxby. 
It  w^ould  be  interesting  to  see  how  his  theories  of  good- 
breeding  w^ere  carried  out  by  himself  as  a  nobody  with  old 
blood  in  his  veins.  He  would  like  to  test  the  common  talk 
that  rank  was  an  accident,  that  old  families,  old  faiths,  old 
education,  old  customs,  old  manners,  old  thoughts,  old 
books,  were  all  so  much  moonshine.  Michael  wondered 
whether  it  were  so,  w^hether  indeed  all  men  if  born  with 
equal  chances  would  not  display  equal  qualities.  He  did 
not  believe  it — he  hated  the  doctrine.  Yet  people  in  all 
their  variety  called  to  him  still,  and  as  he  surveyed  the 
audience  he  was  aware  from  time  to  time  of  a  great 
!onging  to  involve  himself  in  the  web  of  humanity.  He 
was  glad  that  he  had  not  removed  himself  from  the  world 
like  Chator.  Chator!  He  must  go  down  to  Clere  and 
see  how  Chator  was  getting  on  as  a  monk.  He  had  not 
even  thought  of  Chator  for  a  year.  But  after  all  Oxford 
had  a  monastic  intention,  and  Michael  believed  that  from 
Oxford  he  would  gain  as  much  austerity  of  attitude  as 
Chator  would  acquire  from  the  rule  of  St.  Benedict.     And 


502  YOUTH'S    ENCOUNTER 

when  he  left  Oxford,  he  would  explore  humanity.  He  would 
travel  through  the  world  and  through  the  underworld  and 
apply  always  his  standard  of  ...  of  what?  What  was 
his  standard?  A  classic  permanence,  a  classic  simplicity 
and  inevitableness  ? 

The  symphony  stopped.  He  must  hurry  out  and  con- 
gratulate Stella.  What  a  possession  she  was;  what  an 
excitement  her  career  would  be.  How  he  would  love  to 
control  her  extravagance,  and,  even  as  he  controlled  it, 
how  he  would  admire  it.  And  his  mother  had  talked  of 
taking  a  house  in  Chelsea.  What  various  interests  were 
springing  into  existence.  He  must  not  forget  to  ask  Alan 
what  train  he  was  going  by  to  Oxford.  They  must  arrive 
together.  He  had  not  yet  bought  his  china.  His  china! 
His  pictures!  His  books!  His  rooms  in  college.  Life  was 
really  astonishing. 

The  concert  was  over,  and  as  Michael  came  swirling 
down  the  stairs  on  the  flood  of  people  going  home  he  had 
a  strange  sensation  of  life  beginning  all  over  again. 


(I) 


UNIVER^SITY^OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


v 

\         \  Los  Angeles 
This  book  is  DUE  on  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


^0Vl3l95E 


M^«   r*  ^»  <f-}^.(o) 


"-'      ''  ^'  v^-. 


R  E  C  E  n ' 

MAIN  LOAN 


AUG  o  0  196^1 


M. 


|8|9110IU|12)l|2|pi4  *i±6^ 


OMIRL 


^^C    S197S 
APR    5197$ 


110^1?. 


^ 


ym 


%^ 


\9lB' 


ED 


DESK 


P.M. 


in  L9-25m-9,'47(A5618)444 


ivm.  rmTtAnf 


lJNIye: 


c  \l:fos:^3A 


LOS  Ai^lGi^LES 


l^'f 


i 


PLEA<=«?:  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
THIS  BOOK  CARD  ] 


(J  -  -  ■  -^ 


^.i/OJITVDJO'f^ 
University  Research  Library 


